Data Science Engineer

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:  

The past few years have witnessed the acceleration and convergence of two exciting trends in remote sensing and artificial intelligence: the explosion in satellite sensing constellations, government and commercial, has been matched by incredible advances in deep learning (DL), accelerated computing, and open source software. New catalogues of daily temporal data will soon dominate the global archives. This data and related “frontier technologies” can shed light on the sustainable development challenges we face, bring revolutionary levels of transparency and drive a culture of data-driven decision making and accountability. We are focused on researching, developing, and applying core technology in artificial intelligence that will change how our industry measures global activity. For example, we can build systems that detect deforestation within a few days from occurring, anywhere in the world, or extract the most up-to-date maps of roads and buildings for the entire continent of Africa. The design and management of annotated datasets is a fundamental component in the development of computer vision models at Planet. Every analytic product is powered by a model that needs to be trained with large amounts of high quality training data. We are looking for a Data Science Engineer to manage our annotated datasets. This person would help our machine learning engineers in all stages of the dataset development cycle: sample design, collection strategies, manual labeling, ETL scripting, model evaluation metrics and quality assurance. 

Impact You’ll Own:

• Operate specialized image processing pipelines 
• Actively participate in datasets design and sample selection with machine learning engineers
• Use python scripting and command line tools to import and export data using our internal systems 
• Prepare and format datasets to be ready for supervised ML training in our platform
• Create small hand-labeled datasets for R&D 
• Evaluate ML models against labeled datasets and compute performance metrics
• Inspect, evaluate, and edit labeled datasets from external partners
• Perform content inspections of the predictions of production models and report quality defects

What You Bring:

• Good foundations of geospatial information systems
• Familiarity with multiple Earth Observation sensors and data sources
• Intermediate level of Python and Linux command line
• Familiarity with most of the following libraries: NumPy, GeoPandas, Rasterio and Shapely 
• Familiarity with GIS desktop software (QGIS or ArcGIS) and GeoJSON, COG, and STAC standards 
• Bachelor’s degree

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Hands-on experience in two or more of the following application areas of remote sensing: LULUCF, agriculture, urban/settlement mapping, mapping of air quality and climate-changing gases, coastal applications (shallow water bathymetry, benthic habitat mapping), defense and intelligence
• Academic training in remote sensing and GIS
• Experience with statistical data analysis and ML 
• SQL
• Bash scripting

Benefits While Working at Planet:

Global

• Be part of a vibrant international company of 45+ nationalities with office locations in different countries
• Sense of belonging in a diverse and inclusive culture
• Experience a fast-paced spacetech environment
• Countless opportunities to connect within and outside of work with regular team events  
• Personal development with annual L&D budget
• Join our regular hack-weeks and meetup events to exchange knowledge
• Employee Resource Groups that provide safe and empowering spaces for connection and mentorship
• Give back to the community by using one day per quarter for charitable work as part of our 1% Pledge
• Health programs and flexible working hours to support work life balance
• Be part of our growth: we offer equity options for our employees
• Daily virtual mindful bodywork sessions to stay healthy
• We offer equipment and wellbeing support during these challenging times 

Berlin 

• Enjoy a spacious central office located in U/S-bahn Zoologischer Garten
• Employees’ well-being is our top priority: on site massages, snacks, fruits, drinks and company lunches 
• Additional contributions to Company Pension schemes
• Enjoy unique offers and discounts for companies/web shops 
• Additional Company Holidays

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.