Senior Director of Engineering - Civil Government and Commercial

The role

You will lead the engineering strategy, execution, and team development for a global organization of 70+ engineers. You will oversee the delivery of existing solutions and drive product discovery for new emerging solutions using AI.

What you will do

• Lead, mentor, and scale a global engineering organization of 70+ engineers, managers, and directors
• Set performance and accountability standards and define measurable outcomes
• Drive day-to-day engineering execution and delivery for flagship products
• Champion zero to one engineering discovery for new products
• Partner with Product Management, Design, and GTM teams to define product direction
• Ensure systems are scalable, reliable, and secure for government and enterprise use
• Align team output with the mission of using space to help life on earth
• Recruit, mentor, and retain engineering talent

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of relevant software engineering work experience
• 8+ years of supervisory or leadership experience managing multiple layers of engineering management
• Experience leading and scaling distributed engineering teams of 50+ employees across multiple geographic locations and time zones
• Hands-on engagement with AI tools in your own work
• Experience leading engineering teams through AI adoption
• Track record of zero to one product development
• Background in building and delivering geospatial platforms, data analytics solutions, or enterprise SaaS products
• Experience delivering tailored solutions to individual customers
• Ability to collaborate with cross-functional partners to translate requirements into technical roadmaps
• Experience overseeing operational reliability, cloud infrastructure, and software deployment lifecycles
• Ability to drive software delivery metrics and maintain high operational availability/SLAs
• Clear and effective written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

• Success building large scale civil government solutions leveraging forward deployed engineering
• Familiarity with the unique regulatory, compliance, and security requirements of government technology solutions globally
• Experience building sovereign systems for governments

Benefits

• Paid time off including vacation, holidays and company-wide days off
• Employee Wellness Program
• Home Office Reimbursement
• Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement
• Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning
• Equity
• Volunteering Paid Time Off

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.