The opportunity
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.
What you'll do
Optical Network Strategy & Architecture: Define Crusoe's multi-year optical strategy and reference architecture across campus DCI, metro, regional, and long-haul segments, including line system design, ROADM topology, protection and restoration model, and failure domains.
Backbone & Scale-Across Capacity: Architect the transport layer for inter-campus and backbone growth from multi-Tbps today toward hundreds of Tbps, evaluating 400ZR/ZR+, 800ZR, and embedded coherent transponders (Ciena WaveLogic, Nokia PSE) against reach, density, power, and cost per bit.
Platform & Vendor Selection: Lead technical evaluation and selection of optical line systems and transponders. Drive RFPs, lab validation, multi-vendor interoperability testing, and second-source strategy.
Fiber & Route Strategy: Partner with infrastructure, real estate, and procurement on dark fiber, IRU, and wavelength acquisition, including route diversity, fiber characterization (OTDR, CD, PMD), and build-versus-buy decisions for new PoPs and campuses.
Optical Automation & Observability: Define how the optical layer is modeled in source of truth, provisioned, and monitored through open interfaces (OpenConfig, gNMI, TAPI, OpenROADM) and vendor controllers (Ciena MCP/Navigator, Nokia WaveSuite), so optical state is observable and reconciled rather than managed by hand.
Reliability & Failure Analysis: Own optical-layer failure modes end to end, including fiber cuts, amplifier and transponder failures, and gradual performance degradation. Lead RCA for optical incidents and drive design changes that reduce blast radius and time to restore.
What they're looking for
- Cross-Functional Partnership: Work closely with Network Engineering, SDN, data center design, NetOps, finance, and supply chain to align optical capacity with GPU cluster deployments, the backbone roadmap, and construction timelines.
- Technical Leadership: Establish optical design standards, engineering documentation, and operational runbooks. Mentor engineers and help build out the optical engineering function as the network grows.
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Optical Engineering, Physics, or: a related technical field (Master's preferred).
- + years of experience in optical transport networking, including 5+ years as: an architect or senior technical lead designing production DWDM networks at service provider, hyperscaler, or cloud scale.
