Welcome to Planet. We believe in using space to help life on Earth.

Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. This constellation delivers an unprecedented dataset of empirical information via a revolutionary cloud-based platform to authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. We are both a space company and data company all rolled into one.

Customers and users across the globe use Planet's data to develop new technologies, drive revenue, power research, and solve our world’s toughest obstacles.

As we control every component of hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering, our office is a truly inspiring mix of experts from a variety of domains.

We have a people-centric approach toward culture and community and we strive to iterate in a way that puts our team members first and prepares our company for growth. Join Planet and be a part of our mission to change the way people see the world.

Planet is headquartered in San Francisco, California, Earth.

About the Role:

Planet is constantly working on next generation systems and space platforms and we are seeking a Spacecraft Architect (bus/ avionics focused) to lead Planet’s next generation electrical and embedded platform development. You will take chief responsibility for the satellite bus architecture. You will work alongside SW, EE, Payload, RF/Comms, and GNC teams to ensure the bus architecture can sufficiently meet current requirements and is flexible and adaptable for future missions. You will qualify and improve performance, reliability, and lifetime by working with the reliability and qualification teams. You will work closely with systems engineering, missions, and manufacturing teams to ensure mission success. Simply put, you will build the space systems of tomorrow.

Impact You’ll Own:

• Architecture and system level design of avionics, payload electrical, compute, and power systems.
• Make evolutionary and revolutionary improvements in the design, performance, reliability, lifetime, and cost of the platform
• Develop a core technology roadmap to ensure Planet avionics and compute platforms are reliable, adaptable, and cutting edge to support new business needs
• Maintain power and data definitions at subsystem as well as spacecraft level, and develop appropriate satellite simulation environments for power and data budgets
• Lead design efforts for hardware and software validation and verification (V&V) frameworks

What You Bring:

• 10+ years of architect/principal-level engineering experience designing and maturing electronics to market, ability to review low-level design decisions and understand their impact to the larger system/mission
• Expertise in control, power, compute, and embedded systems and hands on bring-up, validation, and system integration experience
• Strong understanding of cross-team dependencies including mechanical, thermal, structural, and space environmental effects
• Strong understanding of the latest COTS technologies. In particular, compute architectures including FPGAs, MCUs, MPUs, CPUs, GPUs, DSP, memories, both from performance and space reliability standpoint. Experience with low-speed and high-speed communication protocols such as I2C, SPI, CAN, CAN-FD, FlexRay, Ethernet, PCIe, SerialIO etc.
• Understanding of the aerospace product development lifecycle process, including analysis and design, development tools and technologies, release and version control, testing methodologies and deployment management
• BS in Electrical/Aerospace/Computer Science or similar work experience

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Extensive aerospace or automotive electronics and software experience
• Experience with Altium or similar EDA tools, high-density PCB design, high speed clock trees. 
• Experience in linux, python, and data analysis
• Excited by working in an agile, fast-paced environment, even in times of uncertainty and ambiguity.  
• Experience providing mentorship for engineers from diverse disciplines.

Benefits While Working at Planet: [US-based]

• Comprehensive Health Plan
• Wellness program and onsite massages
• Flexible Time Off
• Recognition Programs
• Commuter Benefits
• Learning and Tuition Reimbursement
• Parental Leave
• Offsites and Happy Hours
• Volunteering Benefits

Some Press About Us: 

Our CEO, Will Marshall featured on TED and featured in a Planet Blog

“Planet: Bringing Space Back Down to Earth”

Tiny, privately owned satellites are changing how we view the Earth features in NBC News

“Planet And Rocket Lab Create Mission Patch To Honor Women In Aerospace” —Planet Blog

Why we care so much about Belonging. 

We’re dedicated to helping the whole Planet, and to do that we must strive to represent all of it within each of our offices and on all of our teams. That’s why Planet is guided by an ultimate  north star of Belonging, dreaming big as we approach our ongoing work with diversity, equity and inclusion.  If this job intrigues you, but you’re thinking you might not have all the qualifications, please... do apply!  At Planet, we are looking for well-rounded people from around the world who can contribute to more ways than just what is listed in this job description.  We don’t just fill positions, we aspire to fulfill people’s careers, most excited about folks who are motivated by our underlying humanitarian efforts.  We are a few orbits around the sun before we get to where we want to be, so we hope you’re excited to come along for the ride. 

#LI-MI1