Senior Associate, Strategic Initiatives

Crusoe•Denver, CO

2d•$110,000 - $135,000

About The Position

Crusoe is hiring a Senior Associate, Strategic Initiatives to build an intelligence function that helps the company anticipate developments affecting its business. The Strategy team, in the Office of the President and Chief Strategy Officer, produces position papers for executive decisions and incubates programs until they have a permanent owner. This role will develop a differentiated view of relevant markets, competitors, and technologies and translate that intelligence into implications and recommendations for Crusoe. The role combines market research, strategic analysis, cross-functional partnership, and building AI-enabled systems. The Senior Associate will create original market, innovation, and competitive insights; work with teams across Crusoe to identify important business questions; and develop reliable, repeatable research workflows. Success is measured by the contribution of the work to better decisions, earlier identification of important changes, and solutions to meaningful business problems—not by research volume. The position offers direct exposure to the President and CSO, autonomy, and the opportunity to build tools, data, and workflows while working across fast-moving technology, energy, and infrastructure markets.

Requirements

2 to 5 years of experience in strategy consulting, investment or equity research, corporate strategy, market research, or a similarly analytical environment; a strong body of independent work can substitute.
Hands-on fluency with AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini for research and analysis, with demonstrable workflows and an understanding of their limitations.
Experience turning a recurring information need into a dataset and repeatable process, such as an agent, scraper, pipeline, monitoring setup, or model with a real refresh process.
Strong market and commercial judgment, including the ability to reason about customers, competitors, value chains, business models, and unit economics and to learn unfamiliar markets quickly.
Analytical rigor: evaluate source quality, build estimates and scenarios, check calculations, distinguish facts from assumptions, and defend reasoning.
Curiosity and persistence in understanding how things work.
Ability to distinguish what is interesting from what is important.
Ability to synthesize large amounts of information into the key points leadership needs to know.
Builder's instinct for improving recurring processes.
Healthy skepticism and ability to identify misleading charts, unsupported claims, fabricated citations, and inconsistent numbers.
Clear, conclusion-first communication and ability to explain complex topics simply without losing important nuance.
Ability to form evidence-based views and revise them when evidence changes.
Collaborative approach and comfort working across technical, commercial, and operational teams.
Ability to operate independently in ambiguous environments and determine priorities without waiting for a fully defined brief.

Nice To Haves

Domain exposure to AI compute and cloud, semiconductors, data centers, advanced manufacturing, or power and energy markets.
Experience building a competitive intelligence or market intelligence function.
Python, SQL, AI coding tools, or experience with data APIs.
Primary research or expert network experience.
Experience evaluating startups, vendors, partnerships, or acquisition opportunities.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain a differentiated view of markets relevant to Crusoe, including AI compute and cloud, hyperscalers, neoclouds, semiconductors and accelerators, power and energy, data center infrastructure, manufacturing, and adjacent markets.
Develop competitive intelligence on key companies and ecosystems, including their strategies, customers, partnerships, capacity, economics, technologies, and geographic expansion.
Build structured market maps and datasets connecting companies, customers, technologies, and value chains.
Identify developments that could materially affect Crusoe and distinguish meaningful signals from industry noise.
Maintain rigorous sourcing and updating standards so intelligence is trusted and auditable.
Translate fragmented information into actionable insights, explaining what is changing, why it matters, and what Crusoe should consider doing differently.
Work cross-functionally to translate business pain points into strategic questions, size opportunities, compare alternatives, and test assumptions with quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Synthesize external research with information from customers, partners, experts, and Crusoe teams.
Write concise position papers and strategic briefs that present conclusions, supporting evidence, implications, uncertainties, and recommended next steps.
Own recurring leadership intelligence products that highlight developments most relevant to Crusoe.
Support live strategic questions such as market entry, product expansion, partnerships, M&A screens, competitive responses, and emerging technology opportunities.
Build relationships across Crusoe to incorporate company expertise and on-the-ground observations into external intelligence.
Turn recurring research needs into repeatable workflows using AI research tools, agents, APIs, data sources, and light scripting.
Build systems to monitor markets and companies at a scale beyond manual research alone.
Design AI workflows with verification and trust in mind, maintaining links to primary sources, testing accuracy, and understanding automation limitations.
Build tools that augment analyst judgment while preserving clear ownership of conclusions and recommendations.
Document and share workflows so they can be reused and improved across the Strategy team.