Senior Geospatial Engineer

Company Description:

SkyWatch is at the forefront of revolutionizing how earth observation data is accessed and utilized globally. Our innovative platform empowers businesses, researchers, and governments to easily integrate satellite data into their operations, driving informed decision-making and unlocking new opportunities for growth and efficiency. Founded on the principle of democratizing access to space-based technology, SkyWatch provides a seamless interface that aggregates data from numerous satellite sources, offering unparalleled access and insights. Whether monitoring agriculture, managing infrastructure, or advancing scientific research, our scalable solutions cater to diverse industries with a commitment to reliability, security, and sustainability.

Our Products:

Our suite of applications is tailored to meet the diverse needs of users on the SkyWatch platform. Whether you are an individual purchasing data for a project, a business seeking to store and share geospatial data, a GIS specialist in need of imagery for maps or workflows, a developer looking to build innovative solutions with our API, or a data provider seeking to sell to our user network, you can do it with SkyWatch.

Our Culture:

Culture is the personality of a company. It is our company's shared beliefs, values, and practices. At SkyWatch, our culture is incredibly important to us, and we practice it every day. Both as a company and in our products, we value simplicity, dependability, and empathy. Let’s face it — the best jobs boil down to a handful of things: getting the chance to work with amazing people in a great culture with leaders who have your back while pursuing a vision that you can get passionate about.

Please note that SkyWatch may use AI throughout various portions of the talent process.

The mission

Grow SkyWatch’s data products beyond 2D imagery, into 3D, elevation, vessel tracking and location-based vector data, and get them into the hands of the customers who need them.

These products will become a large portion of SkyWatch’s data sales, and this is our first dedicated hire for them. Your job is to make them products customers can easily find, buy and use, wherever they work.

The role

You take over our current 3D work and lead it and the 3D work that follows. You then extend the same approach to the data types after it. You work alongside our image processing team, and your products reach commercial GIS users, cities and defence customers. This is a broad role. When the business needs geospatial judgment beyond 3D, you are the person we turn to.

We are an integrator. Third-party capabilities are our first choice for producing data products, so most of this job is integration, upstream with providers and downstream into the places customers work. The geospatial depth we value most is knowing how these products serve our customers’ use cases.

Key responsibilities

• Take over and grow 3D. Pick up the 3D products we already produce, run them reliably, and lead what comes next.

• Wire products into how customers buy. Connect our data products to discovery, purchasing and publishing, so a customer can find, order and receive them without help. Integrate third-party processing and data providers upstream, and GIS platforms and marketplaces downstream.

• Add the next data types. Bring elevation, vessel tracking (AIS), and location-based vector data into the product line, choosing partners and sources on fit, quality and cost.

• Build applications that show the value. Build geospatial applications that put these products to work, layering 3D with other data: AIS, road traffic, weather, GNSS radio occultation and more. Think of what a city would want over its 3D digital twin to manage and plan.

• Package terrain for platforms that can’t phone home. Deliver elevation products to defence and industry standards for drones, vessels and autonomous systems that operate without a network or satellite positioning.

• Own quality. Accuracy, datums and QC, checked automatically and documented against the specs our customers accept.

• Work across the team. Lend a hand on our in-house image processing for other imagery sources when that is where the work is.

• Build with AI. Use AI agents to write, test and run integration and pipeline code, and put automated checks on the output.

Who you are

• An integrator. You reach for the best existing capability before building your own, and you are good at making other people’s systems work together.

• Use-case minded. You know how a city planner, a GIS analyst or a defence operator uses 3D, elevation and vector data, and you shape the product around that.

• Broad. You are happy across 3D, imagery, vector and platform work, and you go where the impact is.

• An application builder. You don’t stop at the data file. You build the app a planner or analyst actually opens, with the right layers on top.

• AI-native. You have rebuilt how you work around AI tools, and you can show the output it multiplied.

Qualifications

• 6+ years as a software engineer, including 3+ years on geospatial data, platforms or applications.

• Cloud-native geospatial, in production: cloud-optimized formats (COG, GeoParquet, Zarr), STAC, GDAL and rasterio or similar, containers, object storage and batch or distributed compute.

• Built integrations with third-party data and processing services, and delivered data into the platforms customers use.

• A working understanding of 3D, elevation and vector data and how customers use them, including coordinate systems and vertical datums.

• Built geospatial applications on 3D data, such as web 3D apps in CesiumJS, the ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript or deck.gl.

• Evidence of using AI tools to multiply your own engineering output.

• Public code or open-source contributions we can look at. Strongly preferred

• Producing or publishing 3D and elevation products, such as surface and terrain models from stereo imagery, or I3S and 3D Tiles content in ArcGIS. Strongly preferred

• Working knowledge of OGC standards: 3D Tiles, I3S, CityGML or CityJSON, GeoPackage, and OGC API Features and Tiles. Preferred

• Sensor fusion, and building for degraded and denied environments. Defence geospatial standards such as DTED, DGIWG and GeoPackage. Preferred

• Based in Canada, and willing to undergo Government of Canada security screening. Preferred

Compensation

Base salary plus stock options. Health benefits, and remote or hybrid work in Canada. Base salary: CA$135,000 to CA$165,000, depending on experience. This is an existing vacancy.

Why SkyWatch

• Ground floor. The first dedicated hire for a product line we expect to grow fast, with a direct line to the people who set the roadmap.

• Hard problems. 3D cities with live data running across them, and terrain accurate enough for a machine to navigate by.

• The frontier. Satellite, aerial and drone data and an AI-native product line, at a company small enough that your decisions show up in production next week.

Accessibility at SkyWatch

At SkyWatch, we believe every candidate deserves a fair and inclusive experience. If you require an accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know — we're happy to work with you to ensure your needs are met.

To request an accommodation, please advise any member of the talent team or contact us at [email protected].