Senior Technical Program Manager
San Francisco, CA

Job Description

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 decision-makers 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 and machine learning-powered analytics to develop new technologies, drive revenue, power research, and solve our world's toughest challenges.

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 are iterating 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.

The Role

As a Senior Technical Program Manager at Planet, you will lead complex, multi-disciplinary engineering projects using your engineering expertise and resources assigned to you. You will review requirements with internal customers and usher projects through the entire project lifecycle. This includes managing project schedules, identifying risks, resource & budget planning and clearly communicate them to engineering leadership team and project stakeholders via program and system integration reviews. You're equally at home explaining your team's analyses and recommendations to executives as you are discussing the technical trade-offs with internal customers.

You will help coordinate and manage schedules across multiple teams. Your position is important in helping identify blocking issues early and knowing the right set of people to get involved to resolve issues. You may also be involved with mission critical projects which will require you to facilitate a team of engineers using agile practices like bi-weekly sprints and daily stand-ups.

Responsibilities

* Develop schedules, set priorities, and status with engineering, stakeholders and management.
* Work directly with multiple engineering teams and cross-functional stakeholders especially teams actively engaged with imaging ecosystem from payload to pipeline and even including product team members to ensure productivity and progress on multiple concurrent projects.
* Develop processes to measure and improve productivity across engineering.
* Work with Space Systems engineering team as well as Product Management /Marketing, Software Engineering, Customer Success & Sales teams to ensure design and feature roadmaps are aligned with the overall business goals.
* Define, implement, and coach team on best practices.
* Foster healthy program & development practices by giving & receiving feedback with maturity and perspective.
* Support engineering efforts to mature image processing capabilities from conception through on-orbit operations and maintenance

Minimum Qualifications

* BS or higher degree in a technically relevant field
* 8 - 10 years experience in a similar role
* Experience in a technical project management role for development of hardware & software in a cross-functional, cross-organizational context.
* Outstanding communication and facilitation skills.
* Experience providing technical leadership throughout the entire space product life cycle
* Experience in development (design, fabrication, integration & test) of high reliability space electronics with preference in imaging and spacecraft payload
* Experience in leading operational projects from evaluation, design, and execution.
* Strong understanding of hardware and software development process & best practices
* Experience identifying engineering resources needed to get required engineering work product requirements done (people, processes, facilities & tools)
* Experience establishing and maintaining working relationships with all levels of the organization, including customers, users, and other peer groups
* Good at openly expressing your opinions, while actively seeking input on designs, decisions, and presenting your work.
* Familiar with remote sensing data
* Foster culture in-line with high performance teams to meet the technical, schedule and cost challenges
* Experience with leading Configuration Control, Engineering Review, Failure Review, Risk and Opportunity Review Boards
* Must have proven ability to help build and develop teams rapidly.
* Must be results driven and generate a variety of high quality solutions.
* Must have a passion for learning, sharing, and collaboration, when working on technical and development projects.

Preferred qualifications

* MSc or PhD in a technically relevant field
* Experience with FPGA design and development
* Experience with optical system design and development
* Experience with Software integration and test, configuration management, build and release cycles
* Working with operations staff, subcontractors, team members and customers
* Experience applying agile development practices
* Proven ability to work on assignments that require statistical analysis, data evaluation, recommendation development, and decision making.
* Excellent problem-solving, organizational and analytical skills, with the ability to evolve product strategy based on research, data and industry trends.

Some press about us:

Our CEO, Will Marshall's TED Talk

"Tiny Satellites ushering in the New Space Revolution" Bloomberg Businessweek

"The All-Seeing Eye in the Sky video" Bloomberg Businessweek video

"Planet And Rocket Lab Create Mission Patch To Honor Women In Aerospace" -Planet Blog

Join Us:

Planet is headquartered in San Francisco, California, Earth. If you are feeling inspired, check out our website www.planet.com/careers and apply. Be sure to include a cover letter to let us know why you think you'd be a good fit and feel free to mention anyone you have previously worked with at Planet.

We are committed to building a diverse team and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.