Senior Director of Engineering - Civil Government and Commercial

About the role

Planet, a space and data company that designs, builds and operates a constellation of imaging satellites, is seeking an experienced engineering leader to become its Senior Director of Engineering for Civil Government and Commercial. You will lead the engineering strategy, execution and team development for an organization of 70+ engineers across multiple global offices, and work from the Berlin, Haarlem or Ljubljana office three days per week.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and scale a global engineering organization of 70+ engineers, managers and directors across geographies and time zones, setting measurable outcomes and making hard calls on people and priorities.
• Drive day-to-day engineering execution and delivery for existing flagship products, including the Area Monitoring Service (AMS) for CAP compliance, Disaster and Wildfire solutions, the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE) and a portfolio of derived data products.
• Champion zero-to-one engineering discovery, building the technical foundation and prototypes for new commercial and civil government products.
• Partner daily with Product Management, Design and GTM teams to define product direction and align technical strategy with business goals.
• Ensure systems are scalable, reliable and secure for government and enterprise use, guiding architecture and engineering best practices.

Required profile

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 8+ years of supervisory or leadership experience.
• Experience leading and scaling distributed engineering teams of 50+ employees across multiple locations and time zones.
• Hands-on engagement with AI tools and experience leading teams through AI adoption.
• Track record of zero-to-one product development, including technical discovery, architecture and launch.
• Background in geospatial platforms, data analytics solutions or enterprise SaaS products.
• Experience overseeing operational reliability, cloud infrastructure and software deployment lifecycles, and driving software delivery metrics and SLAs.
• Ability to recruit, mentor and retain talent and to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What we offer

• Paid time off, employee wellness program and home office reimbursement.
• Monthly phone and internet reimbursement, tuition reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Volunteering paid time off; equity and possible discretionary bonuses.
• Expected starting gross salary in Slovenia of EUR 103,800 to 129,800.