Data Scientist

Planet Labs is a San Francisco-based Earth observation company that designs, builds, and operates the world's largest fleet of commercial satellites. The company collects daily imagery of the entire planet's landmass, providing high-frequency, high-resolution satellite data to a wide range of customers including governments, agricultural operators, energy companies, financial institutions, and environmental organizations. Its satellite constellations — including SuperDove, SkySat, Pelican, and Tanager — deliver imagery at resolutions ranging from 50 centimeters to multiple meters, enabling near-real-time monitoring of land use, infrastructure, vegetation, water, and emissions. Planet Labs has a strong sustainability and climate mission embedded in its core business model. Through products like Planet Hyperspectral and the Tanager satellite, the company enables detection and monitoring of methane emissions, supporting efforts to identify and reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Its Forestry and Land Use solutions assist with forest carbon measurement, REDD+ monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV), while its Planetary Variables and Sustainable Land Use products help organizations track biodiversity, deforestation, and climate risks at a global scale. What distinguishes Planet Labs from competitors is the combination of its unmatched revisit frequency — capturing the entire Earth's landmass daily — with an expanding suite of analytics and AI-powered derived data products available through the Planet Insights Platform. This cloud-based platform integrates raw imagery with processed data outputs, making Earth observation accessible to technical and non-technical users alike. Founded on the principle of democratizing access to geospatial data, Planet Labs serves customers across agriculture, defense, insurance, mapping, maritime, and science sectors worldwide.

About the Role: 

We are looking for a Data Scientist to join our team in developing high-quality, validated markers that extract insights from dense temporal stacks of satellite imagery across agriculture, land management, and climate. The markers you build form the core of our Area Monitoring System (AMS) delivered to Common Agricultural Policy paying agencies across Europe, owned end-to-end from method to production code. You will collaborate closely with scientists and engineers to deploy models at scale, while expanding beyond compliance into land-cover change detection using embeddings and AI-first workflows.

Ideal candidates are adaptable, curious about AI agents, and eager to iterate directly based on customer feedback. As a member of this team, you will have the opportunity to work with multi-sensor Earth observation data to solve complex environmental and agricultural challenges.

This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our Ljubljana office 3 days per week.

Impact You’ll Own:

• Develop algorithms and machine learning models that extract insights from satellite imagery time series, and maintain and improve the markers we already run.
• Take a research topic from exploration through to production.
• Own marker results for production AMS deliveries across several EU countries — run them, review them, and confirm quality before they reach the client.
• Explore and build embeddings-based insight extraction in new areas beyond CAP.
• Use AI agents in your daily work, and help the team get better at it.
• Co-own the markers codebase together with the rest of the team.
• Collaborate with the team to iteratively build solutions on our platform and existing data building blocks, and inspire and enable our partners to extract insights using them.
• Document and organize your work to be transparent and repeatable.
• Write internal research reports, public blog posts, and reports for clients.

What You Bring:

• 4+ years of relevant work experience.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, data science, or another STEM field.
• Understanding of machine learning principles, including model validation and performance evaluation techniques.
• Proficiency in Python programming, with the ability to write maintainable, well-documented code.
• Experience working with AI agents and modern machine learning tools.
• Experience with version control and Git, and comfort working in a shared codebase.
• Working knowledge of the geospatial domain.
• Ability to deliver projects on schedule and manage technical deliverables.
• Problem-solving skills in technical or analytical domains.
• Professional working proficiency in English, the language of the company.

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Experience working with embeddings or other learned representations of imagery.
• Remote sensing expertise, particularly with satellite time series.
• Experience processing radar data (for example Sentinel-1).
• Familiarity with the agricultural domain, or with the EU Common Agricultural Policy and area-based payment schemes.
• Experience with cloud environments and distributed computing.

Application Deadline:

11:45p / 23:45 CET on the date stated below. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. This posting may be removed earlier than projected if a suitable pool of applications has been received. For this reason, we recommend applying as soon as you are able to.

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

Compensation:

The expected starting gross salary range for this role is listed below. Individual placement within this range is determined objectively based on gender-neutral criteria such as your skills, qualifications, and professional experience. This position may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses and/or equity.