Staff Software Engineer, Control Plane

Crusoe is on a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. As the only vertically integrated AI infrastructure company built from the ground up, we own and operate each layer of the stack — from electrons to tokens — to power the world's most ambitious AI workloads. When you join Crusoe, you join a team that is building the future, faster.

We're in the midst of the greatest industrial revolution of our time. The demand for AI compute is boundless, and power is a bottleneck. We're solving that — with an energy-first approach that makes AI infrastructure better for the world and faster for the people innovating with AI.

We're looking for problem-solving, opportunity-finding teammates with a sense of urgency, who believe in the scale of our ambition and thrive on a path not fully paved — people who want to grow their careers alongside a team of experts across energy, manufacturing, data center construction, and cloud services.

If you want to do the most meaningful work of your career, help our customers and partners advance their AI strategies, and be part of a high-performing team that believes in each other, come build with us at Crusoe.

About This Role:

Crusoe is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to architect and scale the next generation of our Cloud Control Plane. In this high-impact role, you will be the technical lead for the high-availability systems that manage our global fleet of AI-optimized compute, network, and storage resources. You will move beyond standard feature development to define the systemic architecture of our IaaS platform, ensuring that as Crusoe scales to meet massive AI demand, our control plane remains fault-tolerant and performant.

As a Staff Engineer, you will ensure seamless integration between our high-performance hardware and our software orchestration layer. This is a foundational position on the Compute team, requiring a visionary approach to building distributed systems that can handle thousands of concurrent resource state transitions with mission-critical reliability. This is a full-time, on-site role based in our San Francisco or Sunnyvale offices.

What You’ll Be Working On:

• Core Control Plane Architecture: Design and lead the implementation of scalable, reliable microservices that manage complex virtualized resource lifecycles across our global regions.

• IaaS Backend Primitives: Build the foundational primitives that underpin our platform, ensuring high-throughput and low-latency API responses for large-scale cluster provisioning.

• Cross-Domain Collaboration: Partner with Product, Networking, Storage, and Hardware teams to evaluate emerging frameworks and tools, creating differentiated solutions for AI/ML customers.

• Systemic Reliability & Observability: Drive company-wide architectural decisions that improve the maintainability, observability, and disaster-recovery capabilities of our distributed systems.

• Engineering Leadership: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, lead rigorous design reviews, and evolve our hiring practices to build a world-class engineering organization.

• Distributed System Design: Author and review comprehensive design docs for multi-region services that manage complex, concurrent resource state transitions.

• Scale Optimization: Identify and eliminate bottlenecks in our resource orchestration layer, utilizing Go, Kubernetes, and specialized distributed databases.

• Technical Rigor: Solve "impossible" bugs or architectural hurdles while fostering a culture of technical excellence and customer-centricity.

What You’ll Bring to the Team:

• Deep Engineering Mastery: 8+ years of software development experience with a mastery of modern compiled languages—Go is highly preferred, but Rust or C++ are also valued.

• Distributed Systems Expertise: A proven track record of designing, deploying, and scaling fault-tolerant distributed systems and managed cloud services at a global scale.

• Infrastructure Stack Proficiency: Deep technical proficiency with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Postgres, and pub/sub messaging systems.

• IaaS Domain Knowledge: A strong understanding of how cloud resources (Compute, Network, Storage) are abstracted, managed, and orchestrated in an IaaS environment.

• Mentorship & Influence: Demonstrated experience in guiding engineering teams, improving onboarding processes, and driving the professional growth of those around you.

• Strategic Communication: Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to both engineering peers and non-technical stakeholders.

• Operational Mindset: Experience partnering with SRE and Cloud Support to translate operational feedback into architectural improvements.

Bonus Points:

• Experience building or managing control planes at a major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, Azure) or a specialized AI/GPU cloud.

• Contributions to the open-source cloud-native ecosystem (e.g., Kubernetes controllers, custom schedulers).

• Knowledge of virtualization technologies (KVM, QEMU) or container runtime internals.

• Familiarity with the unique orchestration requirements of large-scale GPU clusters and high-bandwidth networking (e.g., InfiniBand or RoCE).

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation

• Restricted Stock Units

• Paid time off & paid holidays

• Comprehensive health, dental & vision insurance

• Employer contributions to HSA account

• Paid parental leave

• Paid life insurance, short-term and long-term disability

• Professional development & tuition reimbursement

• Mental health & wellness support

• Commuter benefits (parking & transit)

• Cell phone stipend

• 401(k) Retirement plan with company match up to 4% of salary

• Volunteer time off

Compensation Range

Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $208,600 - $254,400 + Bonus. Restricted Stock Units are included in all offers. Compensation to be determined by the applicants knowledge, education, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Crusoe is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, citizenship, marital status, sex/gender, sexual preference/ orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, national origin, or any other status protected by law or regulation.