Principal Sustaining Engineering Manager - Spark

Role details

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 the Role: Crusoe is a vertically integrated AI Factory company accelerating energy and compute infrastructure. We believe that “speed is the only moat” and our vertical integration allows us to design, manufacture, and deploy modular power and compute infrastructure at market leading speed and cost. We are seeking a Sustaining Engineering Leader to own how Spark physical modules perform post-deployment and drive continuous improvement. While Product Management defines future generations and NPI delivers them for production, you own each generation once it ramps: fleet reliability, field failures, configuration, component obsolescence, and the design modifications required for full service life performance. In this role, “hardware” and “product” refers to the physical infrastructure of the Spark module: structural steel modules, RPPs, DLC cooling loops, CDUs, chillers, piping headers, electrical and mechanical systems, and power distribution gear. Compute hardware (servers, GPUs, storage, networking, and rack specifications) is owned by Cloud Product. Sitting on the Spark design engineering team, you capture how deployed Spark modules perform in service and aggregate the lessons learned and required changes into the design process, so the next version is more reliable, serviceable, and cost-effective. Working with Data Center Facility Operations and Field Operations, you are the definitive evidence source for Product Management and NPI, turning field data into design requirements and acceptance criteria. You start as the single-threaded leader of this function and build the team as the fleet expands. What You'll Be Working On: I. Fleet Ownership, Facility Ops Interface & Field Issues - Year 1 Ramp & Handover: Participate in production release and ramp readiness reviews for deploying generations as the receiving organization. Establish as-built baselines, spares strategies, service intervals, and repair-vs-replace policies prior to initial fleet launch. - Facility Operations Feedback Loop: Serve as the primary engineering interface with the Data Center Facility Operations team. Gather site-level field feedback across broader facility power, thermal, and environmental systems to analyze how site-wide operational dynamics impact individual Spark modules. - Fleet Reliability: Own subsystem failure rates, mean time between failures (MTBF), and repeat failure metrics. Define the required telemetry every deployed unit must report to ensure operational visibility. - Closed-Loop Corrective Action: Stand up and run the Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) function. Drive root-cause analysis to closure with verified fixes, containing safety or fleet-wide risks immediately when issues arise. II. Change, Configuration & Obsolescence - Post-Release Change Control: Own engineering change orders (ECOs) for fielded generations, quantifying cost and fleet impacts prior to approval. - Configuration Baseline: Maintain as-built and as-maintained configuration baselines, ensuring field retrofits precisely target affected units. - Proactive Component Obsolescence: Manage component lifecycles using Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS) practices - modeling last-time buys against fleet demand and qualifying alternate parts before component shortages occur. - Retrofits & Maintenance: Issue change packages, preventive maintenance schedules, and acceptance criteria for Field Operations execution. III. Feedback Loop to Product Management & NPI - Requirements into Product: Convert fleet and facility operations data into quantified design requirements for future Product Requirement Document (PRD) iterations. - Qualification into NPI: Supply field-derived acceptance criteria to NPI, ensuring historical failure modes are designed out of future module generations before release. - Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Own reliability, serviceability, and maintenance inputs driving Spark unit economics and long-term TCO. - Serviceability Advocacy: Represent maintainability and serviceability in design reviews, using field data to influence future hardware architecture. What You'll Bring to the Team: Education - Required: Bachelor's degree in Mechanical, Electrical, Reliability, or a closely related engineering discipline. Experience - 10 to 15 years in sustaining, reliability, or product support engineering for deployed capital hardware or infrastructure assets. - Track record of converting field performance data into design changes that measurably reduce failure rates and service costs. - Experience building sustaining engineering processes (root-cause analysis frameworks, review boards, spares policies) from the ground up. - Hands-on management of component obsolescence and supplier end-of-life transitions for lon