Space Systems Engineer, Mission Ops (San Francisco)
San Francisco, CA

Job Description

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

Planet's mission is to image the whole world every day and make global change visible, accessible and actionable. We build compact satellites and have launched the largest fleet of satellites in history. We control every component of hardware design and manufacturing, so our office is a truly inspiring mix of experts from a variety of domains. With our humble beginnings in a Cupertino Garage, to a scrappy team of engineers hacking our initial satellite builds, we now find ourselves with brand new technology and market traction for our revolutionary web-based platform. Customers now have insight into the massive data we are collecting from space as well as the opportunity to perform advanced analytics and solve difficult problems with new insights.

Planet has 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. Be a part of our mission and help us build a company that is changing the world.

The Role:

Planet efficiently and safely operates several medium and high resolution spacecraft constellations. Managing these valuable assets is a highly technical feat and the teams that do so consist of skilled engineers from a variety of backgrounds, having collectively worked on more than 30 space missions. Together, these teams support spacecraft commissioning and anomaly resolution, maintain uptime, conduct on orbit special activities, and perform development towards future automation. This role is specifically focused on the safe operation of the SkySat and Dove constellations. Operators are frequently the first to detect and triage anomalous behavior, therefore an understanding of how each spacecraft subsystem relates to one another is important. You can anticipate working in a close collaborative environment, frequently communicating with hardware and software experts to understand anomalies and develop procedures. You will be a go to person for carrying out on-orbit tasking such as propulsive maneuvers, flight software updates, and telemetry analysis. Expect to be in the middle of it all, as the work of the Missions team is essential to Planet's success. You will be responsible for the safe and stable operations of our fleet as we integrate all operations teams together.

The Responsibilities:

* Develop a thorough understanding of a spacecraft bus, and how it is operated.
* Build and edit python scripts to carry out activities on a spacecraft.
* Monitor all spacecraft for proper operation, responding to all off-nominal contingencies (telemetry limit violations, configuration and status changes, subsystem and operational anomalies, etc).
* Participate in on-call rotation in support of spacecraft uptime.
* Develop automated responses and processes for any manual operations.

The Must-Haves:

* Bachelor's Degree in an Engineering, Software, or Science related field from an accredited college or technical school.
* Experience with Python scripting, PSQL (or SQL equivalent), Bash CLI, and Git VCS.
* Experience with data analysis and trending.
* Experience in process automation, from design to software development.
* Excellent attention to detail, procedural discipline, and workflow management.
* Ability to work independently and creatively
* Exceptional communication (verbal and written) and collaboration skills and ability to clearly report and log complex events.

The Nice-to-Haves:

* Previous satellite operations, space mission experience or space systems integration & test experience. Additional experience with hardware testbeds a plus!
* Experience with Nginx, Apache, or equivalent webserver.
* Experience with Python Test frameworks (unittest, pytest, nose, etc).
* Experience with Python Web frameworks (Django, Flask, Hug).
* Experience with Python Webservers (Gunicorn, Tornado, Falcon, uWSGI).

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

"Earth's Wonders Like You've Never Seen Them Before Planet Stories

Applying:

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.