Crusoe

AI Infrastructure

PrincipalNetworkArchitect

$265–310k San Francisco, California, United States FULL TIME
Market Sentiment
HIGH DEMAND

Neural analysis suggests this role is
optimal for Principal candidates.

The Brief

“Principal Network Architect at Crusoe. Skills: Network architecture, Data center networking, SDN, Kubernetes networking. Define network architecture strategy. Own network architecture strategy”

Industry & Context.

AI Infrastructure
Problems you'll solve

Problem-solving

What They're Looking For.

Must Have

12+ years network engineering, 5+ years leadership role, 500+ switches design, Expert routing knowledge, Production SDN controller experience, Hands-on Kubernetes networking, Software engineering fundamentals, Exceptional written skills, Exceptional verbal skills

Nice to Have

Hyperscaler experience, AI cloud provider experience, HPC center experience, Large-scale co-location operator experience, SONiC OS experience, P4 programmable data planes experience, SRv6 experience, Silicon knowledge, Open source contributions, Formal network verification tools experience, eBPF-based networking experience, eBPF-based observability experience

What You'll Do.

Define network architecture strategy

Own network architecture strategy

Design bare-metal data center switching

Design RDMA interconnects

Design SDN control planes

Design Kubernetes networking

Design cloud-layer overlays

Own end-to-end network architecture

Design spine-leaf fabrics

Design out-of-band management

Design RDMA interconnects

Design inter-campus WAN

Design SDN control plane architectures

Evolve SDN control plane architectures

Define network policies

Define multi-cluster service mesh

Define BGP peering architecture

Architect IBN frameworks

Translate goals into configurations

Establish infrastructure-as-code practices

Establish GitOps provisioning

Establish validation pipelines

Define authoritative data models

Ensure version-controlled policies

Design day-0 automation

Design day-1 automation

Design day-2 automation

Define streaming telemetry architecture

Define intent verification

Define closed-loop remediation

Establish engineering standards

Establish reference architectures

Lead architecture reviews

Author design documents

Present proposals to leadership

Mentor senior network engineers

Mentor staff network engineers

Grow technical breadth

How You'll Work.

Team & Collaboration

Cross-organizational influence; Engineering leadership alignment; Product leadership alignment

Communication Scope

Technical documentation; Design proposals

Process & Methodology

Roadmap planning

Full 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 This Role: Crusoe is looking for a Principal Network Architect to define and own the network architecture strategy across our entire infrastructure stack, spanning bare-metal data center switching fabrics and RDMA interconnects to SDN control planes, Kubernetes networking, and cloud-layer overlays. As the industry's first vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider, Crusoe operates at a scale that few companies can match, including a 1.2 GW hyperscale campus in Abilene, TX powering the Stargate project. This is a high-impact, principal-level individual contributor role reporting directly to the Director of Networking, with broad technical authority and cross-organizational influence. In this role, you'll do more than solve today's problems; you'll build the architecture that runs the AI infrastructure o

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