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. 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 a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company with a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. Our competitive advantage—“Speed is the only moat”—is directly tied to our ability to rapidly design, manufacture, and deploy our own modular power and compute infrastructure. 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. This role is central to scaling the team that makes that mission possible. Crusoe’s R&D organization is in a high-growth phase. As Senior Manager, you will be the people leader for the majority of the team—owning hiring, career development, and team performance—while also contributing directly as a program manager during the early scaling phase. This is a hybrid player-coach role for someone who thrives on building teams and delivering results simultaneously. You will help shape an R&D organization that scans the horizon for what’s next, builds partnerships with the companies and researchers developing breakthrough technologies, rigorously tests what’s promising, and drives adoption from pilot through production. WHAT YOU’LL BE WORKING ON: - Team Building & People Leadership: Recruit, hire, and onboard R&D team members across technology evaluation, program management, and related functions. Own the people management lifecycle: conduct regular 1:1s, drive career development conversations, manage performance, and build an inclusive, high-performing team culture. - Organizational Scaling: Partner with R&D leadership to translate the organizational growth plan into a phased hiring roadmap. Define role profiles, interview processes, and onboarding programs that attract and retain top talent in a competitive market. - Program Management (Hybrid): During the team’s early growth phase, directly manage R&D programs—including technology evaluations, external partner engagements, feasibility pilots, and cross-functional projects that advance technologies from concept through pilot validation toward hyperscale deployment. As the team grows, transition program execution to dedicated TPMs while retaining oversight and mentorship. - Operational Excellence: Establish and continuously improve R&D operational processes: intake workflows, project tracking, resource allocation, reporting cadences, and governance structures. Ensure the team operates with transparency, discipline, and speed. - Engineering Team Coordination: Support the interface between R&D and engineering teams across the company. Help facilit