We are seeking a software engineer to develop geospatial data services and advance open-source geospatial technologies. We are a major contributor to efforts in our industry to promote open community standards such as STAC, OGC API, cloud-native geospatial formats, and Kubernetes to enable more research and applications to benefit from Earth data. We share this agenda with our partners, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), and major cloud providers. We are looking to grow our team in Europe to connect the global community and contribute to impactful projects for ESA and other leading organizations.

Your primary contribution will be to design and implement geospatial services with open-source technologies like eoAPI (STAC, dynamic tiling) and up-stream changes in these libraries required to serve our client’s applications. You should be comfortable communicating ideas about emerging and evolving geospatial technologies and software architecture with colleagues at DevSeed and partners. With your expertise, we can unlock the rich information stored in the massive and growing Earth data collections and enable earth scientists to work smarter and faster, giving us all better insight into our changing planet.

Development Seed is a unique and rewarding place to do this work. Over the past two decades, we have honed our approach to stewarding projects from opportunity to successful, impactful products. Our partners are working on exciting and important problems. Our technical teams are built of curious, empathetic people with high intrinsic motivation and individual agency. We open-source a lot of our work, invest heavily in R&D that drives the field, and regularly reinvent the nature of our work.

This is a remote-first position; you must be located in and authorized to work in one of the ESA member states. You will be working on our EU-based projects while also collaborating with our global team.

As a Geospatial Services Engineer, you will:

  • Write clean code and design clean architectures for geospatial data services
  • Work with earth science and cloud infrastructure communities to develop best practices and tools
  • Be an advocate for cloud-optimized data formats and services
  • Work in the open. We support open source, open data, and open science and take pride in our impact. As part of the Development Seed team, we encourage you to talk about your work through blogging and presentations at conferences, seminars, and workshops.

To be successful in this role, you will leverage your skills in building quality services that are consistent and accurately address requirements. Most of your time will be spent writing code and documentation. An ideal candidate has experience with Python for data services and Kubernetes and is excited to learn new tools, services, and approaches.

About you

Requirements:

  • Minimum of 3 years professional experience in collaborative software development
  • Experience with developing APIs in Python (e.g. using FastAPI)
  • Experience using containerization and orchestration to create scalable deployments with Docker and Kubernetes
  • Experience with using open-source geospatial technologies (implementations of STAC and OGC API standards)
  • An interest in service-oriented architecture
  • Experience with Git, GitHub, and collaborative code development
  • Ability to work together and independently in a distributed, remote setting
  • Located and authorized to work in an ESA member state

Nice to have:

  • Contributed to open-source geospatial technologies
  • Familiarity with cloud-optimized data formats, including Zarr, COG, GeoParquet, and n-dimensional data handling in the cloud
  • Willingness to communicate with stakeholders

As a Development Seed team member, you:

  • Collaborate — Working as a team makes us stronger than any individual developer. You write clear GitHub tickets and communicate effectively on Slack and in person.
  • Learn — We constantly evolve our technology stack and techniques to deliver the best work to our partners. You don't need to know any particular language or framework upfront, but demonstrate that you're able and excited to learn new building methods.
  • Code — You write code that focuses on performance and maintainability. You also write detailed documentation before and after writing code.
  • Care about the world and believe that we can do better — Social change is the foundation of everything we do. You are impatient about solving the world’s toughest challenges.

Are you not sure you tick all the boxes? We encourage you to apply. We have a culture of learning, and if this job description sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you.

We have a comprehensive 5 step hiring process, designed to be thorough and engaging to ensure that you and our team have a clear understanding of how we can succeed together:

  1. Application. The deadline for submitting your application is Monday July 15
  2. Introductory interview to get to know each other
  3. Technical interview to talk about your technical skills, prior experience, and answer hypothetical questions about how you’d approach future projects
  4. Team fit interview to align with our team's culture and your longer term career goals
  5. Paid full day virtual interview activity for you to collaborate directly with our team members

Development Seed earnestly embraces diversity and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.

Apply for this Job

* Required
resume chosen  
Dropbox Google Drive
(File types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf)
Cancel
cover_letter chosen  
Dropbox Google Drive
(File types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf)
Cancel

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Development Seed’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.

Enter the verification code sent to to confirm you are not a robot, then submit your application.

This application was flagged as potential bot traffic. To resubmit your application, turn off any VPNs, clear the browser's cache and cookies, or try another browser. If you still can't submit it, contact our support team through the help center.