Senior Manager, R&D

About the role

Crusoe is seeking a Senior Manager, R&D to serve as the operational and people leadership backbone of Crusoe’s growing R&D organization. The R&D mission is to evaluate emerging technologies, define future data center architectures, and deliver validated solutions from pilot scale through hyperscale deployment.

Responsibilities

• Team Building & People Leadership: Recruit, hire, and onboard R&D team members across technology evaluation, program management, and related functions. Own the people management lifecycle: conduct regular 1:1s, drive career development conversations, manage performance, and build an inclusive, high-performing team culture.
• Organizational Scaling: Partner with R&D leadership to translate the organizational growth plan into a phased hiring roadmap. Define role profiles, interview processes, and onboarding programs that attract and retain top talent in a competitive market.
• Program Management (Hybrid): During the team’s early growth phase, directly manage R&D programs—including technology evaluations, external partner engagements, feasibility pilots, and cross-functional projects that advance technologies from concept through pilot validation toward hyperscale deployment. As the team grows, transition program execution to dedicated TPMs while retaining oversight and mentorship.
• Operational Excellence: Establish and continuously improve R&D operational processes: intake workflows, project tracking, resource allocation, reporting cadences, and governance structures. Ensure the team operates with transparency, discipline, and speed.
• Engineering Team Coordination: Support the interface between R&D and engineering teams across the company. Help facilitate planning sessions, regular touchpoints, and ad hoc engagements that ensure R&D is delivering value to the people building and deploying Crusoe’s infrastructure.
• Leadership Partnership: Serve as the primary operational partner to the head of R&D, enabling strategic focus by owning day-to-day team management and program execution. Provide input on organizational design, resource prioritization, and process improvements.
• External Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement: Support relationship management with technology vendors, emerging startups, and research partners. Help coordinate pilot programs and external engagements that bring new technologies into Crusoe’s evaluation pipeline.

Requirements

• 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring, performance management, and career development of technical individual contributors. Experience building or significantly scaling a team is strongly preferred.
• 5+ years of technical program or project management experience in infrastructure, manufacturing, data center, or related engineering environments.
• Sufficient technical background to engage credibly with engineers across data center infrastructure, power systems, cooling, and compute domains. You don’t need to be the technical expert—but you need to understand the landscape well enough to manage and mentor technical ICs effectively.
• Demonstrated experience standing up new teams, functions, or organizational capabilities from early stage. Comfortable operating in ambiguity and building process while delivering results.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to represent the R&D organization to engineering leaders, executive stakeholders, and external partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, or a related discipline. Advanced degree is a plus but not required.
• Experience in a data center, infrastructure, or energy company.
• Track record of managing hybrid teams that combine program management and technical evaluation functions.
• Experience partnering with recruiting to build technical hiring pipelines in competitive talent markets.
• Familiarity with AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, or hyperscale data center environments.

Skills

• People Management: Direct people management experience, including hiring, performance management, and career development of technical individual contributors.
• Program Management: Technical program or project management experience in infrastructure, manufacturing, data center, or related engineering environments.
• Technical Fluency: Sufficient technical background to engage credibly with engineers across data center infrastructure, power systems, cooling, and compute domains.
• Organizational Building: Experience standing up new teams, functions, or organizational capabilities from early stage.
• Communication & Executive Presence: Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and equity packages
• 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
• 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

Pay

Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $132,000 -$165,000 + Bonus. Restricted Stock Units are included in all offers. Compensation to be determined by the applicants knowledge, education, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

Schedule

Hybrid

Company

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.