Director of Software Engineering, Analytics

Description

The company uses space to help life on Earth.

The company builds and runs the largest fleet of imaging satellites ever flown and sells its data through a cloud platform to commercial, environmental, and humanitarian customers. It is both a space company and a data company.

Customers worldwide use this data to build new technology, earn revenue, support research, and tackle hard problems.

Because the company handles hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software itself, its offices bring together specialists from many fields.

Offices are in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and The Netherlands, and many staff work remotely around the world.

The role leads the engineering group that builds the analytics: models and pipelines that turn daily satellite imagery into findings about changes at a site, ship movement in a port, and construction across a country. These analytics support dual-use products, including Global Monitoring Service (GMS) and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) for defense, and are expanding into commercial and civil government work using the same models and platform.

The director reports to the VP of Technology and leads engineering managers and engineers in Denver, Washington DC, remote North America, and Europe. The job is to build the team, the plan, the delivery process, and the operating model.

This is a build role. The group is moving from hand-built detectors to foundation-model methods, growing from hundreds of monitored sites to thousands, and working across classified and unclassified environments.

Responsibilities

• Plan and hire the engineering staff the product roadmap needs, then develop, recruit, and manage them directly, including building enough depth in each area to avoid single points of failure.
• Turn program commitments into dated, owned work and report status plainly, including any slippage.
• Own the analytics side of the interface with the GMS and MDA application teams and meet their shared quality and latency targets.
• Define and carry out a strategy for building models that serve both classified and unclassified environments while keeping the models dual-use.
• Set a plan for moving the existing analytics portfolio onto the latest foundation models, and know the cost per site and per square kilometer for each pipeline so you can plan for a ten-times scale-up as contracts grow.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software or machine learning engineering, focused on computer vision, geospatial analytics, or high-scale data systems.
• 6+ years of experience leading engineering teams, including managing engineering managers and growing an organization through a scaling step.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• A track record of putting machine learning, computer vision, or geospatial analytics into production and owning the results.
• Direct experience leading work governed by ITAR and EAR, with cleared and uncleared staff on the same team.
• Experience working with a strong technical lead or architect who owned technical direction while you owned people, plan, and delivery.
• Ability to write a clear plan and clear status reports and to drive delivery against dated commitments.
• Experience working with defense or intelligence customers, including operators and analysts.
• US person status and an active US government security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one upon hire. TS/SCI is preferred.
• What makes you stand out: a Master's degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Remote Sensing, or a related technical discipline.
• What makes you stand out: experience leading a computer vision team through a shift from task-specific models to foundation models or embeddings.
• What makes you stand out: experience delivering analytics into classified, air-gapped, or sovereign cloud environments such as AWS GovCloud or C2S, and knowing where they break.
• What makes you stand out: experience integrating an acquired team or merging two engineering groups.
• What makes you stand out: domain knowledge in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), maritime, or activity-based intelligence work.

Conditions

Full-time hybrid role: you work from the Denver or Washington DC office 3 days per week.

The role requires US person status and the ability to obtain and hold a US government security clearance.

The US base salary range at the start of employment is $180,700 to $225,900 USD. The final figure depends on job-related experience, skills, and location, and reflects typical US new-hire salaries. Your recruiter can share the range for your preferred location.

The role may also be eligible for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives, including bonus and equity.

Under the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the company will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

The role requires access to export-controlled information. Employment, or hiring of a contractor, depends on being able to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional licensing from the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

Applications deadline: 11:45 PM / 23:45 PT on the date stated in the posting. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, and the posting may close early once a suitable pool is received.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution.
• Generous paid time off, plus holidays and company-wide days off.
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Wellness program and Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Home office reimbursement.
• Monthly phone and internet reimbursement.
• Tuition reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning.
• Equity.
• Commuter benefits for staff local to an office.
• Paid volunteering time off.
• Benefits depend on employment type and location, under applicable law and company policy.