Senior Staff Software Engineer, Storage

About the role

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. The Cloud Storage team at Crusoe is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to serve as a primary architect and visionary for our storage strategy. While a Staff Engineer leads features, a Senior Staff Engineer defines the multi-year technical roadmap that underpins our AI-scale infrastructure. You will be a multiplier, responsible for the architectural strategy, integrity, and global scalability of our bespoke storage services. You will work at the physics of the stack, bridging the gap between high-performance NVMe hardware and globally distributed, S3-competitive object stores.

Responsibilities

• Architectural Vision & Strategy: Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for Crusoe’s storage engine. Identify industry trends (e.g., CXL, NVMe-oF) and integrate them into a cohesive roadmap.
• System Programming Expertise: Leverage proven experience in system programming with languages such as C, C++, Go, and/or Rust to build the foundations of our V2 storage re-architecture.
• Storage Protocols: Architect and implement solutions utilizing industry-standard storage protocols such as NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and NVMe/TCP.
• Open Source Stewardship: Drive and maintain a track record of contributions to the open-source community (e.g., Ceph, GlusterFS, Lustre, Spectrum Scale, OpenEBS).
• Technical Authority: Serve as the final arbiter for critical architecture decisions across the Foundations organization. Lead complex design reviews that intersect storage, networking, and virtualization.
• Deep Performance Engineering: Lead "tiger teams" to solve the most ambiguous and difficult bottlenecks in the stack—from kernel-level IO context switching to global tail-latency in distributed clusters.
• Strategic Collaboration: Work closely with Executive Leadership and Product to align technical capabilities with business milestones, such as our imminent path to IPO.

Requirements

• Cloud Storage Expertise: 12+ years of experience building and operating large-scale, complex distributed cloud computing infrastructure products.
• Troubleshooting & Tuning: Strong troubleshooting and performance tuning skills; ability to profile and optimize the entire IO path.
• High-Drive Mindset: Self-motivation to thrive in a fast-paced environment with a high degree of ownership and minimal supervision.
• Masters of Consistency & Durability: Deep theoretical and practical knowledge of distributed state and data protection at petabyte scale.
• Software Engineering Fundamentals: Mastery of professional software engineering practices for the full SDLC, including coding standards, build processes, and testing.
• Communication & Collaboration: Ability to champion and lead initiatives across the engineering organization, such as tech talks and technical reading groups.

Skills

• Public Cloud & AI/ML: Expertise in one or more Public Cloud offerings (AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI) and familiarity with AI/ML frameworks (PyTorch, Tensorflow, JAX) and MLOps.
• High-Throughput I/O: Experience with cutting-edge I/O architectures like DAOS or SPDK.
• Networking Foundations: Background in RDMA and high-performance networking, including SmartNICs and RoCEv2.
• Distributed Systems Mastery: Experience with highly available and scalable systems such as Cassandra, MongoDB, Redis, or Kafka.
• Theoretical Depth: Strong knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals including CAP Theorem, Paxos/RAFT, consistent hashing, and sharding strategies.
• Education: Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation
• Restricted Stock Units
• Paid time off & paid holidays
• 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

Pay

Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $240,000 - $310,000 + 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.