Senior Engineering Manager, SDN Control Plane

Crusoe Energy Systems LLC; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Restricted Stock Units

Health, dental & vision insurance

401(k) match up to 4%

Paid time off

Job summary

Crusoe Energy Systems LLC seeks a Senior Engineering Manager, SDN Control Plane to lead the team building the scalable control plane for VPC networking and Crusoe Cloud frontend networking. You will own architecture, implementation, and production operations of distributed systems that program multi-tenant virtual networks across large-scale GPU fleets.

The role emphasizes control-plane scale, reliability, and rapid feature delivery, with leadership responsibilities for a distributed systems

Qualifications

• 10+ years in distributed systems or cloud networking.
• 5–7+ years in managing senior staff.
• Deep knowledge of SDN and network virtualization (overlay networks, VPCs, routing).
• Hands-on building large-scale control planes (state reconciliation, API design).

Responsibilities

• Define the roadmap for the VPC control plane and evolve network virtualization systems.
• Oversee design of distributed control-plane services and state reconciliation for scalability.
• Lead reliability engineering, incident response, and latency benchmarking.
• Mentor senior engineers and set technical standards in a high-performance culture.
• Collaborate with data-plane teams and cloud product teams to deliver low-latency networking.

Skills

Distributed systems

SDN & network virtualization

VXLAN/Geneve

BGP/EVPN

Go/Kubernetes controllers

Tools

OVN/OVS

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 a Senior 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 senior leadership role, you will own the architecture, implementation, and production operation of the distributed systems 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 define the roadmap for the VPC control plane and lead 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 oversee 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 lead 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 senior and staff-level 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:

• Extensive Experience: At least 10+ years in distributed systems or cloud networking engineering, with 5-7+ years specifically managing senior/staff-level talent.

• Technical Depth: Deep 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 $250,000 - $300,000 + 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.