Staff Cloud Hypervisor Engineer, Compute at Crusoe (Sunnyvale, CA / United States)
Crusoe· Sunnyvale, CA / United States·
Role details
Crusoe at a glance
Energy-first AI infrastructure company that sources power, builds hyperscale AI data centers, and runs a GPU cloud purpose-built for AI workloads.
Crusoe is a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company. It finds and secures power, builds and operates hyperscale AI data centers, and offers a cloud platform purpose-built for AI training and inference, spanning the stack "from electrons to tokens."
~$3.9B raised · latest: Series E · $1.375B · 2025 (valuation above $10B) · backed by Valor Equity Partners, Mubadala Capital, NVIDIA, Founders Fund
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 the Role: At Crusoe, we are building the "engine room" of the AI revolution. We are seeking a Staff Cloud Hypervisor R&D Engineer to serve as the lead architect for our next-generation virtualization stack. In this role, you will move beyond standard virtualization to design a "Greenfield" hypervisor environment where GPUs, DPUs, and high-speed interconnects are first-class citizens. You will be responsible for eliminating the "virtualization tax," ensuring our cloud infrastructure delivers bare-metal performance for the world’s most demanding AI/ML workloads.
What You'll Be Working On:
- Next-Gen Hypervisor Architecture: Lead the R&D and implementation of core hypervisor components (KVM, QEMU, or custom Rust-based solutions) specifically optimized for massive-scale GPU fleets.
- AI Hardware Virtualization: Develop and refine advanced hardware pass-through and abstraction techniques (SR-IOV, VFIO, mdev) to ensure NVIDIA GPUs and BlueField DPUs operate with near-zero latency in a multi-tenant environment.
- The "Holy Grail" Challenges: Solve high-stakes technical hurdles such as live migration for AI workloads with 80GB+ VRAM and optimizing PCIe peer-to-peer communication between virtualized accelerators.
- Performance Research & Profiling: Conduct deep-dive bottleneck analysis across the entire stack—from CPU microarchitecture and MMU virtualization to guest OS scheduling—to minimize jitter and maximize throughput.
- Open Source Leadership: Actively contribute to and maintain upstream open-source virtualization projects, positioning Crusoe as a thought leader in the Linux kernel and virtualization communities.
- Security & Isolation: Architect robust security boundaries for AI-native cloud infrastructure, balancing high-performance hardware access with strict multi-tenant isolation and hardening.
What You'll Bring to the Team:
- 7+ Years of Experience: Proven track record in hypervisor internals, kernel development, or low-level systems programming.
- Deep Virtualization Expertise: Expert-level knowledge of CPU virtualization (Intel VT-x, AMD-V) and memory virtualization (EPT/NPT, HugePages). You should be comfortable discussing the nuances of VMExit overhead.
- Hardware-Software Integration: Experience working with specialized AI hardware, including GPUs, InfiniBand/RoCE NICs, and SmartNICs/DPUs.
- Programming & Tooling: Mastery of C and C++ is required; proficiency in Rust for modern systems programming is highly preferred. Experience with QEMU, KVM, and Linux kernel debugging tools (perf, ftrace, eBPF).
- I/O Mastery: Deep understanding of VirtIO, vhost-user, and hardware-accelerated I/O paths.
- Technical Leadership: Experience leading complex, cross-functional projects that bridge the gap between hardware engineering and cloud control planes
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 $215,000 -$260,000 + Bonus. Restricted Stock Units are included in all offers. Compensation to be determined by the applicant's 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.
Why work at Crusoe
- 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.