Senior Manager, R&D

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. We are seeking a Senior Manager, R&D to serve as the operational and people leadership backbone of Crusoe’s growing R&D organization. R&D’s mission is to evaluate emerging technologies—working with startups, industry providers, and research institutions—define future data center architectures, and deliver validated solutions from pilot scale through hyperscale deployment.

Responsibilities

Team Building & People Leadership: Recruit, hire, and onboard R&D team members across technology evaluation, program management, and related functions.; Organizational Scaling: Partner with R&D leadership to translate the organizational growth plan into a phased hiring roadmap.; Program Management (Hybrid): Directly manage R&D programs during the team’s early growth phase, including technology evaluations, external partner engagements, feasibility pilots, and cross-functional projects.; Operational Excellence: Establish and improve R&D operational processes such as intake workflows, project tracking, resource allocation, reporting cadences, and governance structures.; Engineering Team Coordination: Support the interface between R&D and engineering teams across the company.; Leadership Partnership: Serve as the primary operational partner to the head of R&D.; External Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement: Support relationship management with technology vendors, emerging startups, and research partners.

Requirements

People Management: 5+ years of direct people management experience, including hiring, performance management, and career development of technical individual contributors. Experience building or significantly scaling a team is strongly preferred.; Program Management: 5+ years of technical program or project management experience in infrastructure, manufacturing, data center, or related engineering environments.; Technical Fluency: Sufficient technical background to engage credibly with engineers across data center infrastructure, power systems, cooling, and compute domains.; Organizational Building: Demonstrated experience standing up new teams, functions, or organizational capabilities from early stage.; Communication & Executive Presence: Excellent written and verbal communication skills.; Education: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, or a related discipline.

Nice to have

Experience in a data center, infrastructure, or energy company.; Background in R&D organizations, advanced engineering groups, innovation teams, or technical consulting practices.; Track record of managing hybrid teams that combine program management and technical evaluation functions.; Experience partnering with recruiting to build technical hiring pipelines in competitive talent markets.; Familiarity with AI infrastructure, high-performance computing, or hyperscale data center environments.

Benefits

Competitive compensation and equity packages; Restricted Stock Units; Paid time off, paid holidays & leave of absence programs; 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; Global travel insurance & emergency assistance; Daily meals allowance; Additional perks & programs specific to location