Engineering Manager, SDN Control Plane

Crusoe Energy Systems LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 215,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off

Stock options

Parental leave

Tuition reimbursement

Wellness programs

Commuter benefits

Job summary

Crusoe Energy Systems LLC is seeking an Engineering Manager, SDN Control Plane to lead the team building the scalable control plane for VPC networking and the Crusoe Cloud frontend network. You will own services that program multi-tenant networks across large GPU fleets, delivering features from commit to production on tight timelines.

The role emphasizes technical ownership, architecture and scale, reliability, and people leadership, with collaboration across data-plane and cloud product teams

Qualifications

• 6-8+ years in distributed systems or cloud networking engineering.
• 2-4+ years managing engineering talent.
• Strong knowledge of SDN and network virtualization: overlay networking, VPC constructs, routing, and control-plane architectures such as OVN/OVS.
• Hands-on experience building large-scale control planes: state reconciliation, consensus and configuration propagation.
• Reliability-focused with experience in multi-tenant cloud services, SLOs and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Define roadmap for the VPC control plane and evolve network virtualization systems.
• Design distributed control-plane services with scalability beyond current fleet size.
• Support reliability engineering, convergence and API-latency benchmarking, incident response.
• Mentor and grow a team of distributed systems engineers.
• Collaborate with data-plane teams and cloud product teams to deliver low-latency networking for multi-tenant GPU clusters.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud networking

SDN knowledge

Leadership

Reliability engineering

Tools

OVN/OVS

VXLAN/Geneve

BGP/EVPN

Kubernetes controllers

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:

Crusoe is seeking an Engineering Manager, SDN Control Plane to lead the team building the scalable control plane for VPC networking, the Crusoe Cloud frontend network. In this hands-on leadership role, you will own the services on the network control plane that program multi-tenant virtual networks across large-scale GPU fleets. Unlike generic networking manager roles, this position focuses on delivering control-plane scale and reliability on aggressive timelines, often moving features from commit to production within days.

What You'll Be Working On:

• Technical Ownership: You will help define the roadmap for the VPC control plane and drive the evolution of network virtualization systems (such as OVN/OVS) that deliver VPCs, subnets, security groups, load balancing, NAT, and internet/hybrid connectivity.

• Architecture & Scale: You will contribute to the design of distributed control-plane services: intent APIs, state reconciliation, network policy compilation, and southbound programming of hosts and DPUs, while driving scalability well beyond current fleet size.

• Production Execution: You will support reliability engineering, convergence and API-latency benchmarking, regression prevention, and incident response, ensuring operational excellence within 3-6 month execution cycles.

• People Leadership: You will mentor and grow a team of mid-level to senior distributed systems engineers, setting technical standards and fostering a high-performance culture of accountability.

• Collaboration: You will partner closely with data-plane teams (XDP/eBPF, DPDK, DPU offload) and cloud product teams to deliver low-latency, highly available networking for multi-tenant GPU clusters.

What You'll Bring to the Team:

• Solid Experience: At least 6-8+ years in distributed systems or cloud networking engineering, with 2-4+ years specifically managing engineering talent.

• Technical Depth: Strong knowledge of SDN and network virtualization: overlay networking (VXLAN/Geneve), VPC constructs, routing (BGP/EVPN), and control-plane architectures such as OVN/OVS or equivalent.

• Distributed Systems Expertise: Hands-on experience building large-scale control planes: state reconciliation, consensus and consistency trade-offs, API design, and fleet-wide configuration propagation (Go, Kubernetes-style controllers, or similar).

• Reliability Focus: A strong understanding of operating multi-tenant cloud services: SLOs, convergence-time and scale benchmarking, graceful degradation, and blast-radius containment.

• Execution Mindset: The ability to resolve complex technical challenges in a fast-moving, execution-heavy environment.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with DPU/SmartNIC-programmed dataplanes, cloud load balancing or NAT at scale, network security policy engines, or open-source contributions to OVN/OVS or SDN projects.

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.