Technical Support Manager

About the Role:  

The Technical Support Manager is the thought leader of the tech support team. They will act as a guiding force to ensure that Planet is providing top quality customer services to our clients. The Technical Support Manager will lead, manage, and maintain all activities related to customer troubleshooting and support including leading, motivating a team of staff to ensure they're giving the best customer service possible while handling queries and complaints from both internal and external customers.

You will build excellent relationships with customer engineering teams to ensure smooth product deployments and timely resolution of  technical problems. Your contributions will directly enable customers to understand our changing  world. 

This is a full time, remote position based in Europe. If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:

• Manage employee activity and development.

• Serve as the primary escalation point for external & internal customers regarding issues, coordinating across all internal teams to ensure issue resolution is completed in a timely manner.

• Provide consistent oversight on service tickets progress to ensure customer timelines and expectations are managed.

• Manage complex customer issues, coordinating appropriate technical personnel, defining work plans, deadlines and driving customer communications until the customer has confirmed issue resolution.

• Develop, implement, and continuously improve process documentation for the technical support team.

• Ensure depth and breadth of technical skills are maintained across the team to support customer demand.

• Ability to manage and delegate projects using standard project/program management methodologies.

• Ability to drive collaboration with global cross functional teams.

• Effectively communicate critical issue status to executive staff, sales teams, and other stakeholders.

• Troubleshoot technically complex issues and understand how those issues impact the customers business priorities in order to develop solutions.

• Lead cross-functional post-incident process reviews to ensure continuous improvement.

• Identify systemic and pervasive issues related to products and/or processes and drive actions to prevent future problems.

• Participate in projects that improve the efficiency, quality, and overall customer experience with Planet products and services.

What You Bring:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent combination of technical education and work experience. 

• 3+ years of experience managing, coordinating, and ensuring resolution on executive-facing escalations.

• 3+ years experience working as a people manager in an escalation or technical support function.

• 3+ years experience in troubleshooting complex technical issues with the ability to understand how those issues impact the customers business priorities.

• 3+ years experience in problem recreation and root cause analysis.

• 3+ years experience in one (or more) scripting languages: JavaScript, Python, Perl.

• 3+ years experience with relational databases (e.g. MySQL, Oracle).

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills at the C-Level.

• Previous experience in writing customer-facing “Root Cause Analysis” or Postmortem reports.

• Determine methods and procedures, and guide team members in problem-solving.

• Ensure high expectations of customer service and service level agreements are met and maintained.

• Track key performance indicators (KPi’s) to ensure proper service levels are met.

• Lead hiring and career development for a team of professionals across a variety of technical disciplines.

• Working knowledge of API’s.

• Familiarity with GIS applications (ESRI, QGIS).

• Familiarity with geo-spatial data, satellite imagery, and remote sensing.

• Experiencing in defining  strategy and implementing AI support solutions related to AI agents, AI agent assist, and AI bots.

• Experience with Zendesk, JIRA, or comparable ticketing systems.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to clearly articulate solutions to technical problems.

• Ability to work in a challenging environment with global customers.

• Ability to work independently, as well as contributing as a team player.

• Ability to multitask and prioritize workload.

• Willingness to travel as necessary to client sites located in EMEA.

• Ability to support scheduled weekend on-call support as needed.

• Proven ability to lead and collaborate effectively in a team environment, with coaching, communication, and interpersonal skills.

• Customer-focused mindset with demonstrated problem-solving abilities and thought leadership.

• Highly organized, proactive, and curious, with the ability to manage critical situations with professionalism and clarity.

Application Deadline:

October 20, 2025 by 23:59 PDT

Export Control Requirements:

Planet Labs Germany GmbH is authorized to receive U.S. export-controlled information at Planet under an export license issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security. This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

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

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