Senior AI/Edge Compute Engineer, Planet

• 10+ years developing algorithms and solving problems pertaining to image processing, computer vision, object detection, machine learning
• 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 (eg git) and CI tools
• Proficient in GPU-based computing frameworks (OpenCL/CUDA/TensorFlow), including working with NVIDIA's TensorRT
• Understanding of embedded and high efficiency software architectures
• Experience designing low latency, highly performant code
• Experience in hardware and software co-design
• This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls

Desirable

• 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 Sr AI/Edge Compute engineer to help develop onboard compute and analytics effort on 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 various 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
• Develop onboard computer vision and machine learning models that enable real time segmentation, feature detection, and object recognition
• Develop pre-processing of raw imagery onboard the satellite to make them useable 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 improving the 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)

• Application Deadline: November 11, 2025 by 11:59 PM PT