Senior Staff Program Lead (Cloud Engineering Operations)

Crusoe Energy Systems; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 370,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health & wellbeing

Time away

401(k) match

Mental wellness

Job summary

Crusoe Energy Systems is seeking a senior leader to establish and run Engineering Operations. You will own key programs like SLOs, incident follow-ups, and change safety, coordinating with engineering, SRE, data science, product, and operations to ensure metrics drive fast, accountable actions.

You’ll start as the first hire in this function, proving the model and shaping its growth as the organization scales, while keeping overhead lean and data-driven decisions central.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, SRE, technical program management, or a technical product role close to production systems.
• Experience running org-wide programs at staff level or above and driving accountability across senior leaders without formal authority.
• Familiarity with incident management platforms at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead Engineering Operations and own standing programs (SLOs, incident follow-up, change safety, capacity delivery tracking, operational data).
• Be the single point of accountability for ensuring metrics reflect reality and drive fast decisions.
• Start as a solo contributor, prove the model, then grow the function as needed.
• Partner with multiple teams (engineering, SRE, data, product) to keep data accurate and a single source of truth.
• Create a single pane of glass for operational health viewed by leadership.

Skills

Software engineering

SRE

Technical Program Management

Technical leadership

Tools

incident.io

Opsgenie

PagerDuty

Job description

• Crusoe’s Cloud Engineering organization is 380 people today and hiring toward 550
• When we sell capacity, we make customers two promises: it will be ready on the date we said, and it will work while they use it
• At this scale, keeping those promises doesn’t happen by accident anymore
• This role exists to make sure it happens on purpose
• You’ll lead Engineering Operations: the operating system that lets Cloud Engineering leadership agree on outcomes, execute, and keep its promises to customers
• You’ll own the standing programs that make operations better every week (SLOs, incident follow-up, change safety, capacity delivery tracking, and operational data) and build the systems that feed the weekly executive Engineering Operations review
• You don’t just report when a metric slips; you find the owner, hold them to the commitment, and make sure a decision happens fast
• You’ll start as the first hire in this function, working solo while you prove out the model above
• As the mandate holds up, you’ll shape how the function grows: what to build, who to bring in, and what to keep lean
• This isn’t a role scoped to a single program or a single dashboard
• You will be a strategic advisor to leadership on whether teams are actually executing operationally, and the person who makes clear owners, shared metrics, and a steady cadence stick across the org
• Engineering Operations programs:
• Own the standing Engineering Operations programs: SLO/SLI definition and attainment, incident management and follow-up, change safety (change policy, maintenance readiness, and pre-production checks), capacity delivery tracking, and operational data. Partner with the engineering leaders who own each program and hold the line on outcomes
• Define and track the metrics that show how the org runs, grows, builds, and enables itself: usable capacity, SLO attainment, MTTD and MTTR, customer-found incidents, on-time capacity delivery, milestone slip, change failure rate, follow-up closure rate, and change policy compliance. Data should tell the story before anyone has to ask
• Partner with engineering, SRE, data engineering, and product to keep operational data accurate, with one source of truth for each metric
• Partner with engineering, TPM, product, SRE, data scientists, customer success, and data center operations to ensure operations run smoothly across all functional areas
• Work toward a single pane of glass that makes the operational health of the organization easy to understand at a glance
• Accountability and operating cadence:
• Own the weekly executive Engineering Operations review: build the systems, data, and pre-reads that feed it, and make sure every risk on the page has an owner, a date, and a next step
• Run the weekly operations planning forum, and partner with Product on a monthly business review that ties operational health to customer outcomes
• Make ownership explicit: clear accountable owners, swimlanes, and articulated outcomes for every program and metric
• Hold teams to what they committed. Drive incident follow-ups, overdue actions, and slipping milestones to closure, and elevate fast when an owner can’t fix the problem alone
• Growing the function:
• Operate as an individual contributor first: prove out the programs, metrics, and cadence before asking for headcount
• Make the case for more capacity as scope outgrows one person, then help hire and onboard the people who join the function
• Own the evolution of the operating system itself, not just the programs inside it: retire process that no longer earns its cost, and keep the overhead on engineering teams as low as possible

Benefits

• Health & wellbeing: Comprehensive health benefits designed to support your overall wellness
• Time away: Paid time off for vacations, family bonding, and unexpected needs
• 401(k) match: Build your financial future with our 401(k) matching program
• Mental wellness: Resources and support for your emotional wellbeing and navigating life’s challenges

The ideal candidate has a technical background (software engineering, SRE, Technical Program Management, or product in an infrastructure context) and is close enough to production systems to hold senior engineering leaders to what they committedYou’re a natural coordinator who works across teams without formal authority. Engineering, SRE, and product leads trust you because you follow throughYou’ve designed operating rhythms (weekly reviews, business reviews, incident reviews) that leaders actually use, and you keep them light for the teams that feed them10+ years in software engineering, SRE, technical program management, or a technical product role, close enough to production systems to know what an SLO breach actually meansYou’ve operated in high-growth infrastructure environments where processes are still being built; ambiguity doesn’t paralyze youYou can turn messy, multi-source data into a clear picture of organizational health, and you know how to pick the few metrics that drive decisions over the many that fill dashboardsScrappy, low-ego, high-drive. You build the program and tooling yourself when it doesn’t exist yet, and you care more about the outcome than the creditA track record of leading org-wide programs at the staff level or above, and of driving accountability across senior engineering leaders without formal authorityComfortable starting as a team of one: you don’t need a team in place to start driving impact, and you know when the case for headcount is real versus prematureTime inside AWS, GCP, Azure, CoreWeave, Lambda Labs, or a similar cloud providerExperience running an SLO, incident review, or change management program at a cloud or infrastructure companyFamiliarity with incident.io, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, or similar incident management platforms at scaleBackground in AI/ML infrastructure