---
title: 'Principal Systems Software Engineer at Crusoe'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/principal-systems-software-engineer-crusoe-san-francisco-aee07y1zcp38'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-04'
---

# Principal Systems Software Engineer at Crusoe

- **Company:** [Crusoe](https://feeny.ai/companies/crusoe)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA / United States
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-04
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/crusoe/a1ad6adb-6706-4490-9512-fd8fcb51dae9

## Job description

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:

As the Principal Systems Software Engineer, you will serve as the visionary lead for Crusoe’s next-generation AI infrastructure. This is a role for an industry-recognized expert who has already "seen the movie" at hyperscale and is ready to redefine the I/O path for the age of generative AI. You aren't just building a cloud; you are designing the fluid fabric that unifies Bare-Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS), Intelligent IaaS, and Elastic CaaS into a single, high-performance pool of intelligence.

In this position, you will bridge the gap between silicon and software, advising executive leadership on critical hardware/software co-design pivots while remaining hands-on enough to lead elite R&D teams in shipping production-grade kernel and orchestration code. We are looking for a master of the I/O path who can push massive-scale training workloads to the theoretical limits of hardware. This is a full-time position.

## WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON:

- Unifying Infrastructure Pillars:
- Bare-Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS): Architect systems that deliver raw GPU throughput via zero-latency InfiniBand/RDMA fabrics for massive-scale training.
- Intelligent IaaS: Design highly optimized, thin virtualization layers using KVM or custom micro-VMs to provide enterprise-grade isolation without the "virtualization tax."
- Elastic CaaS: Build a high-performance container substrate (utilizing Kubernetes or Slurm) that allows AI workloads to burst and scale across heterogeneous GPU nodes.
- Mastering the I/O Path: Lead the architectural design of our internal cloud fabric, drawing on experience from top-tier hyperscalers to drive the technical roadmap for SR-IOV, RDMA, and virtualized GPU scheduling.
- Advanced R&D Leadership: Lead elite workstreams to prototype and productionize novel methods for managing memory, networking, and compute that don't yet exist in standard cloud distributions.
- Technical Strategy & Documentation: Draft white papers and RFCs that define the next two years of Crusoe’s compute and networking stack.
- High-Level Debugging: Work alongside Staff and Senior engineers to resolve complex race conditions in the I/O path and optimize kernel-level memory pinning for GPU clusters.
- Industry Influence: Represent Crusoe in open-source communities and industry forums to influence the global direction of cloud-native AI infrastructure.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING TO THE TEAM:

- Hyperscale Provenance: 12+ years of experience designing and shipping core infrastructure at a major hyperscaler (e.g., OCI, AWS, Azure, GCP) or a specialized HPC cloud.
- Deep Systems Authority: Authoritative knowledge of the Linux kernel, virtualization internals (KVM, QEMU, Firecracker), and high-performance networking (RoCE v2, InfiniBand).
- Hardware-Software Co-Design: Proven ability to design software that maximizes the performance of NVIDIA/AMD GPUs and high-speed NICs.
- R&D Leadership: Experience leading cross-functional teams through high-ambiguity projects and delivering production-ready, mission-critical systems.
- Industry Contributions: A portfolio of significant contributions to the field, which may include patents, major open-source contributions, or published research in distributed systems.
- Communication Mastery: The rare ability to explain the nuances of memory-mapped I/O to an engineer and the business value of a new fabric architecture to the Board.
- Mandatory Education: A Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related analytical field (or equivalent professional experience).

## BONUS POINTS:

- Patent Holder: Possession of patents related to network virtualization, GPU scheduling, or distributed file systems.
- Open Source Leadership: Maintainer status or significant contributions to the Linux Kernel, Kubernetes, or specialized HPC projects.
- AI/ML Workload Expertise: Direct experience optimizing infrastructure for Large Language Model (LLM) training and inference at scale.
- Peer-reviewed publications at top systems venues (OSDI, SOSP, NSDI, SC), patents, IETF RFCs
- Significant open-source contributions, or industry white papers on distributed systems, high-performance networking, or AI infrastructure

## 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

$260,000 - $340,000 + Significant Equity & Bonus. Compensation is determined by the applicant's depth of expertise, previous impact at scale, and alignment with our architectural goals.

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.

## About Crusoe

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Crusoe is an energy-first AI infrastructure company that designs, builds, and operates hyperscale data centers and a cloud platform purpose-built for artificial intelligence workloads.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series E)
- **Headquarters**: Denver, Colorado, USA
- **Founded**: 2018
- **Founders**: Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness

## Core Business
- Primary industry/industries: AI Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Data Centers, Clean Energy
- Target customers: Enterprise AI companies, AI-native startups, research institutions, government agencies (B2B)
- **Mission**: "Accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence."

## Products & Services
- **Crusoe Cloud**: An AI-optimized cloud platform purpose-built for AI workloads, featuring high-performance NVIDIA and AMD compute, accelerated storage, and optimized RDMA networking. Claims to deploy models up to 20x faster and cut costs by up to 81%.
- **Crusoe Managed Inference**: A managed AI inference service built with Crusoe's proprietary MemoryAlloy technology, offering best-in-class speed, throughput, and reliability. Features the Crusoe Intelligence Foundry for model selection and API key management.
- **AI Data Center Infrastructure**: Vertically integrated design, build, and operation of hyperscale AI factories (e.g., the 1.2 GW Stargate campus in Abilene, TX). Modular, scalable construction for power-hungry AI workloads.
- **Crusoe Managed Kubernetes & Slurm**: Managed orchestration services that eliminate operational overhead for customers.
- **Crusoe AutoClusters**: Fault-tolerant, managed cluster services for large-scale AI training.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company).
- **Key Metric**: Raised over $1.8B+ in total funding (Series E in 2024 was $1B+; Series D in 2024 was $600M; Series C in 2021 was $350M).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: NVIDIA, NYDIG, GE Vernova, Redwood Materials, Tallgrass, AMD. The company has also partnered with leading energy and technology firms to power its data centers.
- **Growth Signals**: Divested bitcoin mining business to NYDIG in 2023 to focus exclusively on AI infrastructure; broke ground on the 1.2 GW Stargate campus in Abilene, TX; expanded into Europe with a geothermal/hydro-powered deployment in Iceland; announced 1.8 GW Wyoming data center with Tallgrass; acquired GPU memory optimization startup Atero and established a Tel Aviv office.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Energy-First Approach**: The company’s core differentiator is its vertical integration starting from energy sourcing. It uses "environmentally aligned power sources" (wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, natural gas with carbon capture) to power its AI factories, including pioneering technology to convert wasted natural gas into energy.
- **Vertical Integration**: Controls the entire stack—from finding innovative energy sources to building and managing hyperscale data centers and operating the cloud platform.
- **NVIDIA Partnership**: Close partnership with NVIDIA, providing access to the latest and highest-performance GPU hardware for its cloud and infrastructure.
- **Proven Performance**: Claims 99.98% uptime, 100% customer satisfaction score, and significant cost/performance advantages (up to 81% cost reduction).

## Strategic Focus
- **Massive Infrastructure Expansion**: Aggressively scaling its data center footprint, with major projects in Abilene, Texas (Stargate) and Wyoming (Tallgrass), and expansion into Europe.
- **Deepening AI Cloud**: Continuing to build out its Crusoe Cloud platform with managed services (Kubernetes, Slurm, AutoClusters) to make it easier for AI companies to use their infrastructure.
- **Responsible AI**: Emphasizing sustainability and responsible AI governance, as evidenced by achieving ISO 42001 certification and publishing an ESG report.
- **Acquisition-led Growth**: Acquired Atero (GPU memory optimization) to enhance its core technology stack.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: The company is united by a tangible mission: "Accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence." Employees report high levels of engagement (92% proud to work there per internal survey).
- **Massive Growth Trajectory**: Crusoe is at the center of the AI infrastructure boom, building some of the world's most powerful AI factories. For job seekers, this means exposure to cutting-edge technology and the opportunity to scale a company from a startup to an industry leader.
- **Culture**: The company values "moving fast and making things," continuous learning, and collective genius. It describes itself as an "AI factory company" that values velocity and impact.
- **Work Policy**: Hybrid/Office presence required in most roles. Office locations include: Denver (HQ), San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Bellevue, Tulsa, Dublin (Ireland), and Tel Aviv (Israel).
- **Benefits**: Competitive compensation & equity, comprehensive health & wellness, mental health resources, retirement plans, paid time off, leave of absence programs, learning & development, volunteer time off, daily meals allowance, and other location-specific perks.
- **Engineering Culture**: Strong emphasis on technical excellence, working with large-scale systems, and pioneering new approaches to energy and infrastructure. The company values candidates' "AI fluency" in its hiring process.

## Sources
1. [crusoe.ai](https://www.crusoe.ai/)
2. [crusoe.ai/careers](https://www.crusoe.ai/about/careers)
3. [crusoe.ai/about/culture](https://www.crusoe.ai/about/careers/culture)
4. [crusoe.ai/about/company](https://www.crusoe.ai/about/company)

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