AI/Edge Compute Engineer
Listed on 2026-02-16
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Software Development
Machine Learning/ ML Engineer, AI Engineer, Computer Science, Data Scientist
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 cloud-based platform to authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. We are both a space company and a data company.
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. Planet is a global company with employees working remotely worldwide and joining us from offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and The Netherlands.
About the Role
Planet is working on the next generation small satellite bus that will host a high resolution optical imaging payload (Pelican) and a hyperspectral payload (Carbon Mapper). We are seeking an AI/Edge Compute engineer to help develop onboard compute and analytics for the next generation satellites. You will work with various teams to finalize the system requirements, develop functional specifications, and down-select the processors.
You will work independently and with others on the development of onboard processing and machine learning algorithms for Earth Observation applications. You will collaborate with electrical engineers, camera engineers, firmware engineers, data pipeline and analytics engineers to build and iterate on the solution.
This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our San Francisco HQ 3 days per week.
Impact You ll Own
- Develop onboard computer vision and machine learning models that enable real time segmentation, feature detection, object recognition, and geolocation.
- Develop pre-processing of raw imagery onboard the satellite to make them usable by the machine learning algorithms.
- Collaborate with other space systems and software engineering teams to implement deep-learning-based object detection systems on pre-processed imagery for identifying, characterizing, and classifying objects.
- Explore and develop new methods for improving detection performance and runtime of inference targeting the NVIDIA Jetson platform.
- Work with internal customers to develop onboard processing and machine learning pipelines for various use cases and classification tasks.
- Help to architect and develop the data pipeline and platform supporting onboard processing.
- Hardware/software co-development of edge computing solutions for Planet’s next generation spacecraft.
- Own and drive performance metrics (e.g., latency, memory, bandwidth, power).
What You Bring
- 4+ years developing algorithms and solving problems pertaining to image processing, computer vision, object detection, machine learning.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or other relevant degree.
- Experience in software development, especially for computationally constrained environments.
- Extensive experience programming in Python and/or C++ with computer vision libraries.
- Understanding of version control (e.g., git) and CI tools.
- Proficient in GPU-based computing frameworks (OpenCL/CUDA/Tensor Flow), including working with NVIDIA s Tensor
RT. - Understanding of embedded and high efficiency software architectures.
- Experience designing low latency, highly performant code.
- Experience in hardware and software co-design.
What Makes You Stand Out
- Experience with machine learning on earth observation data sets.
- Experience with deployment environments for embedded devices, CI, and the cloud in machine learning scenarios.
- Background in Visual Large Language Models, Foundation Models, zero/few shot learning, and open vocabulary detectors.
- Low-level programming experience in CUDA/OpenCL.
- Excellent communication and analytical skills.
- Ability to work well both autonomously and collaboratively.
- Additional education or certifications in a relevant field of study.
Final date to receive applications
April 19, 2026 at 11:59p PT
Benefits
- Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
- Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
- Generous Paid Time Off in addition to holidays and…
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