Vice President Defense and Intelligence Engineering

The role

You will lead and scale the software engineering organization responsible for building dual-use products and applications. You will oversee technical architecture, systems development, and operational delivery for products like Global Monitoring Service and Marine Domain Awareness.

What you will do

• Lead, mentor, and scale multi-disciplinary software engineering teams
• Define software architecture, data models, and technical standards
• Oversee engineering development standards and deployment pipelines for ITAR and EAR compliance
• Partner with Product Management to translate market vision into engineering roadmaps
• Direct the technical integration of machine learning models and agentic workflows
• Drive software engineering metrics, system reliability, and secure cloud deployment

Required qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering and systems architecture
• 8+ years of direct experience leading and scaling multi-disciplinary engineering organizations
• Direct experience managing engineering teams, software build pipelines, and data handling governed by ITAR and EAR
• Track record of architecting, building, and operating end-to-end dual-use or defense software applications at scale
• Active high-level government security clearance, or eligibility to obtain top-secret clearance upon hire
• Deep technical expertise in distributed cloud architectures, high-throughput data processing pipelines, API infrastructure, and machine learning model integration
• Ability to drive software delivery metrics and maintain high operational availability/SLAs
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field

Nice to have

• Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Machine Learning, or a relevant technical discipline
• Direct engineering experience building foundation models for remote sensing use cases, agentic platforms, or automated tip-and-cue execution loops
• Background in developing software for secure government environments, air-gapped systems, or sovereign cloud deployments
• Experience in multi-sensor data fusion workflows, including optical satellite imagery and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

Benefits

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
• Generous Paid Time Off in addition to holidays and company-wide days off
• 16 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave
• Wellness Program and Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Home Office Reimbursement
• Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement
• Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning
• Equity
• Commuter Benefits (if local to an office)
• Volunteering Paid Time Off

Before you apply

• Employment is contingent upon the ability to access export-controlled information without additional export licensing
• Active high-level government security clearance or eligibility to obtain top-secret clearance is required

About the company

Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. The company is both a space company and a data company.