# Staff Software Engineer, Storage

**Company:** [Crusoe](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/crusoe)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $240k – $310k/yr
**Experience:** 12+ years
**Skills:** C++, Rust, Go, Ceph, Nvme, Nfs, Iscsi, Nvme/Tcp, Cxl, Nvme-Of, Spdk, Daos, Rdma, Rocev2, AWS
**Posted:** 2026-04-08

> Leads architectural vision and strategy for AI-scale cloud storage systems, bridging NVMe hardware to distributed object stores. Requires 12+ years in distributed systems, system programming in C/C++/Rust/Go, and deep storage protocol expertise.

## Job Description

## What You’ll Be Working On

**Architectural Vision & Strategy:** Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for Crusoe’s storage engine. Identify industry trends (e.g., CXL, NVMe-oF) and integrate them into a cohesive roadmap.

**System Programming Expertise:** Leverage proven experience in system programming with languages such as **C**, **C++**, **Go**, and/or **Rust** to build the foundations of our V2 storage re-architecture.

**Storage Protocols:** Architect and implement solutions utilizing industry-standard storage protocols such as **NFS**, **SMB**, **iSCSI**, and **NVMe/TCP**.

**Open Source Stewardship:** Drive and maintain a track record of contributions to the open-source community (e.g., **Ceph**, **GlusterFS**, **Lustre**, **Spectrum Scale**, **OpenEBS**).

**Technical Authority:** Serve as the final arbiter for critical architecture decisions across the Foundations organization. Lead complex design reviews that intersect storage, networking, and virtualization.

**Deep Performance Engineering:** Lead "tiger teams" to solve the most ambiguous and difficult bottlenecks in the stack—from kernel-level IO context switching to global tail-latency in distributed clusters.

**Strategic Collaboration:** Work closely with Executive Leadership and Product to align technical capabilities with business milestones.

## What You’ll Bring to the Team

**Cloud Storage Expertise:** 12+ years of experience building and operating large-scale, complex distributed cloud computing infrastructure products.

**Troubleshooting & Tuning:** Strong troubleshooting and performance tuning skills; ability to profile and optimize the entire IO path.

**High-Drive Mindset:** Self-motivation to thrive in a fast-paced environment with a high degree of ownership and minimal supervision.

**Masters of Consistency & Durability:** Deep theoretical and practical knowledge of distributed state and data protection at petabyte scale.

**Software Engineering Fundamentals:** Mastery of professional software engineering practices for the full SDLC, including coding standards, build processes, and testing.

**Communication & Collaboration:** Ability to champion and lead initiatives across the engineering organization, such as tech talks and technical reading groups.

### Bonus Points

- Public Cloud & AI/ML: Expertise in one or more Public Cloud offerings (**AWS**, **GCP**, **Azure**, **OCI**) and familiarity with AI/ML frameworks (**PyTorch**, **Tensorflow**, **JAX**) and MLOps.
- High-Throughput I/O: Experience with cutting-edge I/O architectures like **DAOS** or **SPDK**.
- Networking Foundations: Background in **RDMA** and high-performance networking, including SmartNICs and **RoCEv2**.
- Distributed Systems Mastery: Experience with highly available and scalable systems such as **Cassandra**, **MongoDB**, **Redis**, or **Kafka**.
- Theoretical Depth: Strong knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals including **CAP Theorem**, **Paxos/RAFT**, consistent hashing, and sharding strategies.

**Education:** Advanced degree (**Master's** or **PhD**) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

## Benefits

- Competitive compensation
- Restricted Stock Units
- Paid time off & paid holidays
- 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

**Compensation Range:** Up to $240,000 - $310,000 + Bonus. Restricted Stock Units are included in all offers. Compensation to be determined by the applicant's knowledge, education, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data.

## Similar roles

- [Staff Software Engineer - Backend](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/e275364f-82a8-47ae-b0fe-9b9ba4ba80dc) - Sigma - New York, NY - $240k – $270k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer - Backend](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/7ffed518-451c-4d22-bc0e-2be4750388ef) - Sigma - San Francisco, CA - $240k – $270k/yr
- [Senior Staff Software Engineer, Storage](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/344eb3f7-781a-4631-bfa7-11edbafd4ed0) - Crusoe - San Francisco, CA - $240k – $310k/yr
- [Staff Software Engineer, Enterprise Platform](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/13146111-73f5-42d4-bda3-c2c0fe0a1bd1) - Replit - Foster City, CA - $240k – $350k/yr
- [Member of Technical Staff, Backend Engineer, API](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6c8d946a-191f-4e2e-b233-7fa7f9bb07c4) - Runway - Remote - $240k – $290k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4bc2f353-53c0-4793-9549-395808f4ca19
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4bc2f353-53c0-4793-9549-395808f4ca19