Staff Engineer, Crusoe Managed Data Transfer (Distributed Systems)
About The Position
Crusoe is hiring a Staff Engineer to serve as the technical lead and systems architect for its Managed Data Transfer (MDT) service. MDT is a managed service that moves petabyte-scale training data between hyperscaler storage and Crusoe storage, enabling AI labs and Physical AI companies to train on Crusoe GPUs without building their own transfer pipelines. The role will design the control plane, transfer worker fleet, and integrations with Crusoe storage and network, while setting the path for supporting additional clouds and Crusoe-internal transfers. This is an engineering leadership role on a new team. MDT has a working production prototype serving customers, so the Staff Engineer will assess what to retain, harden, refactor, extend, or replace, and sequence the work while avoiding disruption to current customers. The role leads architecture through Crusoe's review process, mentors engineers, and reports to the Engineering Manager of Managed Data Transfer within Managed Platform Services. The position owns end-to-end architecture, prototype migration, throughput and correctness strategy, interfaces with partner teams, extensibility and build-versus-buy decisions, and operational standards. It also partners with Product on scope, pricing trade-offs, and milestones, and develops the team's technical capability through design reviews, RFC feedback, and coaching.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of experience shipping production software.
- Hands-on experience designing and operating data-intensive distributed systems at scale, including production failure modes.
- Experience leading a service from prototype to general availability.
- Understanding of object storage semantics, file systems, and TCP throughput.
- Ability to profile and improve underperforming data transfers.
- Proven ability to evolve a live system while keeping risk to current customers low.
- Experience defining API boundaries and schema contracts with partner teams and negotiating them to agreement.
- Experience with customer-facing on-call and building maintainable, observable, predictable systems.
- Proficiency in Go or another modern compiled language; Go is strongly preferred.
- Ability to explain architectural decisions effectively to engineers, Product Managers, and Engineering Managers.
Nice To Haves
- Experience building or operating bulk data transfer systems such as AWS DataSync, Google Storage Transfer Service, or rclone at petabyte scale.
- Familiarity with cloud networking and interconnects such as AWS Direct Connect or GCP Interconnect.
- Experience with cross-account cloud IAM and threat modeling for services that hold customer credentials.
- In-depth experience with approximate nearest-neighbor indexing, including HNSW, IVF, product and scalar quantization, or DiskANN-style indexes on SSD.
- Experience with AI, HPC, or Physical AI data pipelines.
Responsibilities
- Own the end-to-end design of MDT, including the job API and scheduler, Kubernetes transfer workers, storage integration, and network paths.
- Evaluate the production prototype and determine what should be refactored, extended, or replaced.
- Move current prototype users to the managed service without interruption.
- Set the data-plane strategy for sharding, concurrency, straggler handling, and checksum verification, and define benchmarks targeting line-rate transfers over dedicated interconnects.
- Define and maintain interfaces between MDT and Storage, Network, Kubernetes, IAM, Console, Billing, and Monitoring teams.
- Design for additional cloud providers and Crusoe-internal transfers, including a pluggable transfer engine and regional worker pools.
- Evaluate open-source and vendor options before deciding to build solutions internally.
- Set reliability, observability, and on-call standards for systems shipped by the team.
- Partner with Product on scope, pricing trade-offs, and milestones, and surface edge cases early.
- Mentor engineers through design reviews, RFC feedback, and direct coaching.
- Lead the design through Crusoe's architecture review process.
Benefits
- Competitive compensation and equity packages.
- Restricted Stock Units.
- Paid time off, paid holidays, and leave of absence programs.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.
- Employer contributions to an HSA account.
- Paid parental leave.
- Paid life insurance, short-term disability, and long-term disability.
- Professional development and tuition reimbursement.
- Mental health and wellness support.
- Commuter benefits for parking and transit.
- Cell phone stipend.
- 401(k) retirement plan with company match up to 4% of salary.
- Volunteer time off.
- Global travel insurance and emergency assistance.
- Daily meals allowance.
- Additional location-specific perks and programs.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
