Product Insights, Software Engineering Manager
About Us:
BlackSky is a real-time intelligence company. We own and operate the world's most advanced space-based intelligence platform and provide customers satellite imagery, automated analytics and high-frequency monitoring of strategic locations, economic assets and events from around the globe. BlackSky is trusted by the most demanding allied military and intelligence organizations and commercial companies to deliver foresight into critical matters that affect national security and the economy. BlackSky's data enables governments and businesses to see, understand and anticipate change as it happens, giving them the ultimate strategic advantage so they can act quickly. Our global team works with cutting-edge technology to make a difference around the world and prides itself on being people-first, customer-focused and fun.
BlackSky is seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our newly established Product Insights team. This team is responsible for accelerating the delivery of highvalue insight products directly through the BlackSky platform — enabling customers to derive value from BlackSky imagery without relying on multiple external vendors. While the BlackSky imaging constellation provides a powerful foundational layer, the broader market demands turnkey insight products, seamless workflows, and integrated partner solutions. The Product Insights team will bridge that by designing, building, integrating, and operating scalable product pipelines that make advanced analytics available natively within BlackSky.
As the Engineering Manager for Product Insights, you will lead a team focused on:
- Integrating and operating products from partners or new analytic flows across a variety of modalities
- Developing platform capabilities to host, orchestrate, and disseminate Blacksky products
- Ensuring reliability, consistency, and quality of new and existing insight products delivered to customers
- Collaborating across imagery, platform, partner engineering, and product teams to accelerate insight product timetomarket
The ideal candidate has strong software engineering and cloud infrastructure expertise, experience running production pipelines, familiarity with hosted analytic products (ML or otherwise), and a proven ability to lead a high-performing team in a fast-paced, cross-functional environment. We would love candidates near either our Herndon, VA or Seattle, WA offices but may also consider remote candidates. This role reports to the Senior Director, Ground Systems Software Engineering.
Responsibilities:
- Build, develop, and retain a high-performing engineering team focused on product hosting, partner product integration, and platform-based product delivery.
- Set technical strategy and roadmap for the Product Insights team, ensuring the platform can scale to support a diverse portfolio of internal and partner insight products.
- Lead design and implementation of new product hosting architectures, including pipeline execution, versioning, reliability, and monitoring.
- Collaborate with product, platform, AI/analytics, imagery, and partner engineering teams to define requirements, align priorities, and accelerate product readiness.
- Identify and remove cross-team roadblocks related to product ingestion, data availability, platform constraints, or partner integration.
- Maintain deep technical involvement through code reviews, architectural decisions, and occasional hands-on development.
- Foster a culture of continuous improvement, technical excellence, and strong ownership of product reliability and customer impact.
- Proactively identify risks, bottlenecks, and opportunities to accelerate product delivery, especially where new flows or partner integrations require novel approaches.
- Support sprint planning, team capacity management, and roadmap development in partnership with product leadership.
- Other responsibilities as assigned.
Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- A minimum of eight (8) years of professional experience in software engineering, including experience building or operating complex distributed, autonomous, or mission‑critical systems.
- At least two (2) years of experience leading engineering teams as a people manager or technical lead with formal leadership responsibilities.
- Minimum of two years of experience managing or leading high-performing engineering teams, including hiring, capacity planning, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration.
- Demonstrated experience designing and building scalable production software solutions and architectures.
- Hands on experience with cloud services such as AWS EKS, S3, EC2, Aurora / RDS, SQS, SNS, Batch, etc.
- Excellent communication skills and expert at bridging the gap between highly technical teams and non-technical business units.
- Some programs this role supports may require the candidate to be a U.S. citizen.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Master’s degree (or higher) in a relevant technical field.
- Ten or more years of professional engineering experience, including leadership of teams responsible for high-availability or mission-critical software.
- Two or more years of experience in the geospatial industry.
- Knowledge and experience with MLOps and DataOps as a practice.
- Experience with distributed compute environments such as Kubernetes and Dask.
- Strong Python or Golang proficiency and experience writing production software for data ETL, micro-services, geospatial, data analytics, and/or cloud deployment.
- Knowledge of system safety, fault tolerance, redundancy, and recovery strategies in autonomous or operationally sensitive environments.
- Proven track record partnering with Product, Sales, and Executive leadership to align roadmaps with business goals.
- Prior experience aligning engineering execution with both commercial production SLAs and program‑specific requirements, deliverables, or milestones.
Benefits eligibility for full-time, US-based employees includes:
- Medical, dental, vision, disability, group term life and AD&D, voluntary life and AD&D insurance
- BlackSky pays 100% of employee-only premiums for medical, dental and vision and contributes $100/month for out-of-pocket expenses!
- 15 days of PTO, 11 Company holidays, four Floating Holidays (pro-rated based on hire date), one day of paid volunteerism leave per year, parental leave and more
- 401(k) pre-tax and Roth deferral options with employer match
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Employee Stock Purchase Program
- Employee Assistance and Travel Assistance Programs
- Employer matching donations
- Professional development
- Mac or PC? Your choice!
- Awesome swag
The anticipated salary range for candidates in Seattle, WA is $165,000-205,000 per year. The final compensation package offered to a successful candidate will be dependent on specific background and education. BlackSky is a multi-state employer, and this pay scale may not reflect salary ranges in other states or locations outside of Seattle, WA.
BlackSky is committed to hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.
To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.
EEO/Pay Transparency Statements: