Principal Network Production Engineer, Spark

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 Cloud is seeking a Principal Network Production Engineer to partner across the full lifecycle of our network infrastructure, from the day a new site is designed to the day it is running production AI workloads and every day after. As we rapidly scale our footprint of high-performance compute (HPC) and GPU-based AI infrastructure, you will help define how new data centers and edge sites come online and how the fleet is operated, monitored and improved once it is live.

This is a senior technical leadership role at the intersection of Network Engineering, Data Center Operations, Site Reliability and Infrastructure Strategy. You will partner with Network Architecture to shape designs that can be both built and run at scale, mentor a team of Staff and Senior engineers across deployment and operations, and represent the combined org in cross-functional planning with Supply Chain, Data Center Ops, and Site Reliability leadership. You are not refining a runbook. You are helping author the playbook for how the world's most innovative AI cloud comes online and stays online.

What You'll Be Working On

Deployment

• Partner on Global Deployment Strategy: Help define the multi-quarter technical roadmap for how Crusoe deploys network infrastructure across new and existing data centers, edge sites, and backbone interconnects.

• Shape the Standards: Co-author and help ratify internal RFCs and technical standards for physical and logical network deployment (cabling, optics, fabric provisioning, validation, and handoff) that the broader engineering org executes against.

• Influence Architecture for Deployability and Operability: Partner closely with Network Architecture to shape designs that scale operationally. Be the senior voice ensuring that what gets designed can be built, validated, and then run and repaired at hyperscale pace.

• Shape the Deployment Automation Platform: Help set the technical direction for Crusoe's ZTP, IaC, and validation tooling. Drive the strategy for Python-, Ansible-, and CI/CD-based systems that stage and validate hundreds of devices simultaneously.

• Shape the Validation Framework: Help establish the burn-in, site acceptance testing (SAT), and commissioning criteria used across the fleet to ensure zero-defect handovers into production operations.

Operations

• Partner on Fleet Operational Excellence: Help set the operating model for the live network across data centers, edge sites, and backbone, including SLOs, on-call structure, escalation paths, and change management.

• Drive Reliability and Incident Response: Serve as senior escalation point for complex network incidents affecting GPU clusters and customer workloads. Lead post-incident reviews and partner on the follow-through that eliminates repeat failures.

• Build Monitoring, Telemetry, and Automation for Day-2 Operations: Help set direction for observability, alerting, config compliance, drift detection, and automated remediation so that operations scales with the fleet instead of with headcount.

• Close the Loop Between Operations and Deployment: Feed operational data (failure modes, optic and cable defect rates, MTTR, recurring tickets) back into deployment standards, validation criteria, and architecture so each new site is better than the last.

• Partner on Lifecycle and Maintenance Strategy: Help plan firmware and OS upgrades, hardware refresh, optics and spares strategy, and maintenance windows across the fleet with minimal impact to running workloads.

Vendors, Capacity and Leadership

• Shape Vendor and Partner Strategy: Help establish standards, SLAs, and qualification programs for structured cabling vendors, remote hands partners, and data center providers globally, covering both build-phase and ongoing operational support. Influence hardware vendor roadmaps (Arista, Juniper, NVIDIA/Mellanox) based on Crusoe's operational needs.

• Drive Capacity and Asset Strategy: Partner with Supply Chain and Infrastructure leadership on capacity planning, hardware lifecycle, spares, and the turn-up cadence for new backbone capacity and edge interconnects.

• Mentor and Multiply: Provide technical guidance to Staff and Senior engineers on both deployment and operations. Lead design reviews and post-incident reviews, and drive systemic improvements to quality and reliability across the org.

What You'll Bring to the Team

• Experience: 12+ years of network engineering experience with a heavy focus on large-scale data center deployments, infrastructure programs, and live production operations, including significant time in hyperscale, large cloud, or ISP environments.

• Demonstrated Technical Leadership: Proven track record of authoring standards, mentoring engineers, and driving multi-quarter technical initiatives that span teams. You have operated as a senior technical voice in an organization where decisions you made are still in production.

• Hyperscale Build and Run Experience: Comfort operating at scale (10K+ network devices, multi-region fabric deployments), both building when the supply chain, the timeline, and the physics are working against you, and running a live fleet with strict availability expectations.

• Mastery of Physical Layer Standards: Deep expertise in structured cabling (SMF/MMF, MPO/MTP), optical transceivers (400G/800G and roadmap to 1.6T), and data center power and cooling for HPC workloads.

• Routing and Switching Fluency: Expert hands-on experience with Arista (EOS), Juniper (Junos), and NVIDIA/Mellanox platforms in leaf-spine architectures. You can go as deep as the problem demands.

• Protocol Proficiency: Strong working knowledge of BGP, EVPN-VXLAN, and LLDP as they relate to large-scale fabric provisioning, validation, and troubleshooting.

• Automation Architect: Track record of designing and shipping deployment and operations automation used by a broader engineering team: platforms others build on, not just scripts you wrote. Strong Python and Ansible; familiarity with modern IaC and CI/CD patterns.

• Operations and Reliability Depth: Experience running network on-call and incident response at scale, with working knowledge of monitoring and telemetry (SNMP, streaming telemetry, syslog, flow data), SLO and error-budget thinking, and change and maintenance management.

• Program Leadership: Proven ability to lead multiple complex, concurrent deployment and operational programs across time zones and physical locations, with executive-level communication and risk management.

• Diagnostic Depth: Able to diagnose complex physical layer and link-layer issues using OTDRs, light meters, and packet captures, and able to teach others to do the same.

• Education: Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent practical experience in hyperscale or ISP environments.

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation and equity packages

• Restricted Stock Units

• Paid time off, paid holidays & leave of absence programs

• 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

• Global travel insurance & emergency assistance

• Daily meals allowance

• Additional perks & programs specific to location

Compensation Range

Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $285,000 - $335,000 + 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.