Senior Engineering Manager, Management Plane Systems

Crusoe • San Francisco, CA

3d • $237,000 - $288,000

About The Position

Crusoe is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager, SDN Management Plane to lead the team responsible for the automation, observability, configuration management, and policy enforcement layer that runs across their entire network fleet. This is a senior software engineering leadership role focused on platform engineering, where the primary output is software such as automation systems, observability pipelines, and configuration management platforms. The Management Plane is a critical horizontal layer that connects control and data plane systems, enabling a self-aware, self-healing, and continuously verifiable network. The role involves deep engagement in platform architecture, systems design, and technical roadmap development, with opportunities to apply GenAI and machine learning to network operations.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in network software engineering, network automation platform engineering, or infrastructure platform engineering.
• 5 to 7+ years managing senior and staff-level software engineers, with demonstrated ability to build and scale a platform team.
• Proven track record of architecting and shipping production-grade automation and observability systems.
• Deep hands-on experience building network automation platforms that other engineering teams depend on as internal customers.
• Strong fluency in network automation frameworks and tooling: Ansible, Nornir, Napalm, Salt, or equivalent.
• Proven experience building production CI/CD pipelines for network infrastructure, including test coverage, rollback logic, and policy validation.
• Experience with network source-of-truth systems (NetBox, Nautobot, or custom CMDB) and building software-driven reconciliation loops.
• Familiarity with network telemetry and observability systems: gNMI, gRPC streaming telemetry, OpenTelemetry, or equivalent.
• Solid understanding of network protocols and SDN architectures: BGP, VXLAN, EVPN, and familiarity with control plane systems (OVN/OVS preferred).
• Experience with network modeling standards: YANG, Netconf, RESTCONF, or intent-based networking abstractions.
• Strong software engineering background with fluency in Python and/or Go.
• Able to set code quality standards, define testing strategies, and review complex platform code at a staff engineer level.
• Demonstrated ability to lead in fast-moving, execution-heavy environments.
• Track record of managing platform teams with internal customers, balancing roadmap commitments with operational reliability and stakeholder needs.
• Clear platform mindset: built software that other teams depend on, defined its interfaces, and owned its reliability as a product.

Nice To Haves

• Experience applying GenAI, ML, or AIOps techniques to network operations: anomaly detection, predictive failure analysis, or natural-language configuration interfaces.
• Background in AI infrastructure or GPU cluster networking environments.
• Contributions to open-source network automation or observability projects.
• Experience with release management and change control systems for large-scale network infrastructure.
• Familiarity with RDMA/RoCE or high-performance networking in GPU environments.
• P4 or programmable networking pipeline experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture, development, and production operation of Crusoe's SDN Management Plane, the automation and observability layer that manages the network fleet across all regions.
• Build and operate CI/CD pipelines for network configuration, including automated testing, policy validation, and push-on-green delivery of network changes.
• Design and implement software systems for state reconciliation, configuration drift detection, and automated remediation workflows.
• Define provisioning and onboarding automation for new nodes, regions, and customer environments.
• Drive the design of network observability systems, including streaming telemetry, synthetic probing, anomaly detection, and real-time traffic monitoring.
• Design and implement self-healing network capabilities through closed-loop automation.
• Set the technical vision for applying GenAI and machine learning to network operations.
• Partner with Control Plane, Data Plane, infrastructure, and compute teams to ensure clean software interfaces and support GPU cluster networking requirements.
• Act as the internal platform owner for network automation, treating other engineering teams as customers.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of senior and staff-level software and network automation engineers.
• Set technical standards, review architecture and design decisions, and own team performance and development.
• Foster a high-ownership engineering culture focused on shipping production software.

Benefits

• Industry competitive pay
• Restricted Stock Units in a fast growing, well-funded technology company
• Health insurance package options that include HDHP and PPO, vision, and dental for you and your dependents
• Employer contributions to HSA accounts
• Paid Parental Leave
• Paid life insurance, short-term and long-term disability
• Teladoc
• 401(k) with a 100% match up to 4% of salary
• Generous paid time off and holiday schedule
• Cell phone reimbursement
• Tuition reimbursement
• Subscription to the Calm app
• MetLife Legal
• Company paid commuter benefit; $300/month

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed