Software Engineering Manager, Area Monitoring

About the Role:

The Area Monitoring (AM) Services and Apps team is looking for a Software Engineering Manager passionate about leading engineers building the next generation of agricultural and environmental monitoring systems. Our platform began as a solution for the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—a collection of web applications, APIs, and data services for monitoring agriculture with satellite imagery.

While this remains a core commitment, our vision is expanding. We are evolving the platform into a more generic, scalable, and reusable system to create a robust foundation for future area monitoring solutions and products. Your job will be to lead this team, mentoring a mix of junior and senior engineers as they strengthen our core infrastructure and build horizontal capabilities for new markets. You will work closely with Product Managers and Technical Leads, and collaborate with multiple teams. Ideal candidates have a positive attitude and are excited about Planet's mission.

This is a full-time, hybrid position based in our Ljubljana office (Slovenia). You will be expected to work from the offices a minimum of 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:

• Lead a team of software engineers, including planning and code reviews.
• Take ownership for the overall planning, execution and success of sophisticated technical projects.
• Represent your team in cross-functional interactions, such as vetting out product requirements, aligning priorities across various branches of the organisation as well as managing dependencies with other engineering leads.
• Think critically about the long-term career development of team members, providing regular performance feedback and mentoring.
• Conduct regular check-ins and 1-1s with team members.
• Own the operation of Area monitoring services and apps by measuring performance, creating alerts, runbooks, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies.
• Contribute technically to projects by being a hands-on coder and technical resource as necessary and removing roadblocks. In this role you may code up to 50% of your time.

What You Bring:

• 4+ years of industry experience, and 2+ years of experience as a manager/supervisor responsible for software engineers.
• Experience leading teams to deliver highly available, consistently performant services.
• Experience with Java and related frameworks (e.g., Spring Boot, Hibernate).
• Experience with React or other similar font-end frameworks
• Experience with REST APIs, HTTP(S).
• Excellent grasp of relational databases.
• Excellent communication skills in English, written and oral.
• Experience working in cross-functional teams that put customer requirements first
• Ability to be adaptable and open to changes and challenges

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Experience with Python.
• Experience with geospatial technologies, remote sensing, or big data.
• Experience in authentication technologies such as OAuth and IAM.
• Experience with CI/CD tools and practices (e.g., GitLab CI/CD, Docker, Gradle).
• Experience building backend services and infrastructure that scales and is easy to evolve.

Application Deadline:

November 6, 2025 by 23:59 Pacific Time (11:59 PM PT)

Benefits While Working at Planet:

These offerings are dependent on employment type and geographical location, based upon applicable law or company policy.

• 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