Senior Technical Program Manager - Platform
About the job
- At least 6 years of software development or program management experience in SaaS, complex data lifecycles, discovery/search engines, or cloud-based content delivery.
- A bachelor's degree in a relevant field.
- Experience leading cross-functional projects across a broad organization.
- Experience with the product lifecycle from concept through development, launch preparation, go-to-market, deprecations, and end-of-life.
- Experience optimizing cross-team delivery cycles and establishing predictable execution patterns within a matrixed engineering organization.
- Experience coordinating high-stakes technical programs across global timezones, with a focus on building asynchronous workflows and healthy decision-making cultures.
- A track record of managing system migrations or service consolidations, specifically moving from fragmented legacy tools to unified platform endpoints.
- Analytical, problem-solving, and creative thinking skills, paired with the ability to communicate findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Ability to balance tactical day-to-day work with forward-looking improvements to scale operational efficiencies.
- Actively explores AI technologies to automate workflows, improve data, or enhance team productivity.
- Drive Planet’s largest, complex efforts that cross many teams and organizational boundaries, illuminating the path for teams and owning predictability of execution through the product lifecycle.
- Work closely with team leads to develop and manage end-to-end program plans, including establishing and managing internal processes, schedules, metrics, risks, and communication with project stakeholders.
- Lead technical programs for Planet’s Insights Platform development, including building experiences to discover catalog content and scaling high-performance services that deliver data and insights to user applications.
- Work with Product Managers, Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, Design, Data Science, and other Technical Program Managers.
- Drive product and engineering roadmap execution and delivery.
- Translate Product and Engineering inputs into realistic, capacity-checked timelines and reconcile commitments across teams to surface and resolve conflicts.
- Work closely with engineering to ensure product and design requirements are implemented to scope.
- Create and manage program schedules and break them into incremental, visible milestones with definitions of done.
- Manage relationships and scope, and approve work for external contract integration software developers.
- Continuously identify dependencies and risks and work with stakeholders to make them actionable while still small.
- Facilitate decision-making and healthy escalation through data-driven analysis and constructive debate.
- Communicate vertically and horizontally across business and technical teams to keep stakeholders informed of progress, priorities, risks, and changes to requirements or plans.
- Drive results by continuously improving ways of working and processes, now and for the future.
- Experience with remote sensing, earth observation data, or geospatial systems.
- Experience working with remote, worldwide teams.
- A desire to improve processes, tools, and ways of working to scale development cycles.
- A growth mindset and a desire to learn quickly.
About the company
Planet Labs provides near-daily, high-resolution Earth imagery and geospatial data to government, environmental, agricultural, and commercial clients through a subscription service. Its Dove satellites in low Earth orbit capture 8-band imagery, which is stored, processed, and made accessible via a cloud-based platform; customers can also request specific images or data through tasking orders and use Planet’s analytics tools. The company differentiates itself with a large constellation of small, affordable satellites delivering frequent imagery and an integrated suite of analytics and customization options beyond raw images. Its goal is to deliver timely Earth observation data and insights that support decision-making across organizations and society.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2010
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- September 2026 Q2 revenue hit $116.1 million, up 58%, with defense 70%.
- October 1, 2026 launch delivered Tanager-2, Project Suncatcher, and 18 SuperDoves.
- Planet reported over $4 billion satellite-services pipeline and raised fiscal 2027 guidance.
What critics are saying
- SynMax sued Planet in June 2026 over alleged misuse of QA accounts for Vessel Detection training.
- Planet recorded $12.5 million litigation accrual and faces pending Delaware indemnification claims.
- Defense revenue concentration and capital-heavy constellation buildouts leave one launch failure able to halt growth.
What makes Planet Labs unique
- Planet's 718 satellites, daily global imaging, and vertically integrated launch-to-analytics stack.
- Pelican Gen 2 now targets 30 cm imagery and one-hour delivery with edge compute.
- Hyperspectral Tanager and Google Project Suncatcher expand Planet beyond imagery into specialized computing.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Health Savings Account/Flexible Spending Account
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Paid Vacation
Paid Sick Leave
Paid Holidays
Sabbatical Leave
Remote Work Options
Wellness Program
Mental Health Support
Home Office Stipend
Phone/Internet Stipend
Tuition Reimbursement
Equity
Commuter Benefits
Volunteering Paid Time Off
Parental Leave
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
↑ 1%2 year growth
↑ 0%Planet Labs is moving beyond selling satellite imagery. It now builds and operates custom satellites for government clients, and delivery of that hardware is lifting its sales. In fiscal Q2 2027, 12% of revenue was booked on delivery, against 1% a year earlier. The quarter included the first Pelican satellite built for the Swedish Armed Forces. Revenue rose about 58% to $116 million, while defence and intelligence sales grew more than 90%. Management cited more than $4 billion of possible satellite orders, though signed contracts are growing slowly. Backlog stood at about $815 million, up about 11%. The company still loses money: its net loss over the past twelve months equalled 95.1% of revenue. It guided fiscal Q3 revenue to $101 million-$105 million, and the stock has fallen 50% in six months.
Planet Labs announced its prototype satellite for Alphabet's Google has launched into orbit aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The satellite is part of Google's Project Suncatcher, which tests Tensor Processing Units in space. This marks Planet Labs' 40th successful launch, bringing its total delivered satellites to 718. The company's shares rose 8.43% on Friday following the announcement. Planet Labs operates an Earth-imaging satellite constellation and provides Space Infrastructure as a Service. In its second quarter, Planet Labs reported record revenue of $116.1 million, up 58.1% year-over-year, though it remains loss-making with $0.03 per share losses. The company raised its fiscal 2027 revenue guidance to between $430 million and $441 million. Analysts rate the stock a "Moderate Buy" with a mean target price indicating 102.4% potential upside.
Planet Labs stock has fallen 49% in three months, trading at 16.6 times sales compared to 3.0 for the S&P 500. The satellite imagery company's revenue grew 58% year-on-year in fiscal Q2 2027, driven primarily by defense and intelligence customers, which saw over 90% growth. A significant portion of Q2's revenue came from delivering the first Pelican satellite to Swedish Armed Forces. This represented 12% of quarterly revenue, up from 1% a year earlier. Such sales are booked immediately upon delivery rather than through subscriptions. However, Planet's contracted work grew only 9% year-on-year at Q2's end, far slower than revenue growth. Management attributes this to delivering on larger contracts whilst exploring new markets with shorter pilot deals. The company has identified over $4 billion in potential opportunities, with more than 25% considered near-term. Planet forecasts fiscal Q3 revenue of $101 million to $105 million.
Planet launches Suncatcher, Tanager-2, and 18 superdove satellites. SAN FRANCISCO / Oct 01, 2026 / Business Wire / Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL), a leading provider of daily data and insights about change on Earth, today announced the successful launch of 20 satellites: the first demo mission for Google's Project Suncatcher; Tanager-2, its latest hyperspectral satellite; and 18 SuperDoves. The spacecraft were launched to orbit aboard the Transporter-18 rideshare mission with SpaceX from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Planet has successfully made initial contact with Tanager-2, the Project Suncatcher prototype, and two SuperDoves and begun the commissioning process. Planet expects to make contact with the remaining 16 SuperDoves that will deploy on the D-Orbit ION orbital transfer vehicle on schedule. This marks Planet's 40th successful launch and a total of 718 satellites built and delivered on orbit. Developed in partnership with Google, the Project Suncatcher satellite will run the first-ever test of Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in space. The moonshot project is exploring the feasibility of running machine learning (ML) compute systems in-orbit. Developed in partnership with Carbon Mapper, Tanager-2 features best-in-class hyperspectral VSWIR (Visible, Near-infrared and Short-wave infrared) imaging capabilities. With a cutting-edge, adjustable sensitivity imaging spectroscopy payload onboard, Tanager is designed to capture imagery in 426 contiguous bands with ~5 nm spectral resolution at 30 m spatial resolution. This configuration makes Tanager an ideal sensor for detecting methane emissions and a myriad of hyperspectral applications such as rare-earth element (REE) identification, water quality analysis, and agricultural intelligence. Planet continues to work with Carbon Mapper to scale the fleet, with plans to build and deploy at least three additional Tanager satellites following Tanager-2. The 18 SuperDoves of Flock 4J will supplement PlanetScope, Planet's flagship near-daily, global monitoring mission, which provides consistent global coverage across millions of square kilometers for customers in commercial enterprise, civil government, and defense and intelligence sectors. With more launches ahead, Planet continues to expand its constellations to meet global customer demand across satellite services, data and vertically-integrated geospatial intelligence solutions, and more. To learn more about Planet's industry-leading capabilities, visit https://www.planet.com/constellation-services/. About Planet Labs PBC Planet is a leading provider of global, daily satellite imagery and geospatial solutions. Planet is driven by a mission to image the world every day, and make change visible, accessible and actionable. Founded in 2010 by three NASA scientists, Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest commercial Earth observation fleet of imaging satellites. Planet provides mission-critical data, advanced insights, and software solutions to customers comprising the world's leading agriculture, forestry, intelligence, education and finance companies and government agencies, enabling users to simply and effectively derive unique value from satellite imagery. Planet is a public benefit corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange as PL. To learn more visit www.planet.com and follow Green Stock News LLC on X, LinkedIn, or tune in to HBO's 'Wild Wild Space'. Forward-looking Statements Certain statements contained in this press release are "forward-looking statements" about Planet within the meaning of the securities laws, including statements about the expansion of the high resolution capacity of Planet's fleet, the delivery of such capacity to Planet customers, and the Company's ability to realize any of the potential benefits from product and satellite launches, either as designed, within the expected time frame, in a cost-effective manner, or at all. Such statements, which are not of historical fact, involve estimates, assumptions, judgments and uncertainties. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those addressed in the forward-looking statements, including risks related to the macroeconomic environment. Such factors are detailed in Planet's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Planet does not undertake an obligation to update its forward-looking statements to reflect future events, except as required by applicable law. Plug into more green Stock news. Tap into the pulse of emerging green sectors every morning. Top daily headlines from clean energy, cleantech, cannabis, and sustainable transport stocks:
Planet Labs announced its Pelican-12 satellite has arrived at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of launch on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. The second-generation satellite features 30cm optical resolution, on-orbit AI edge computing via NVIDIA Jetson, and a steerable antenna for intersatellite data relay. This marks Planet's fifth Pelican launch of 2026, shipped less than three months after Pelican-11. The enhanced imagery resolution and real-time AI processing strengthen Planet's offering for defence, agriculture and infrastructure clients. The deployment demonstrates Planet's rapid engineering capability whilst reinforcing SpaceX's dominance in commercial launch services. However, both companies face challenges from heavy capital expenditure requirements and execution risks tied to constellation deployment and operational costs.