Director, New Product Introduction - Spark
CRUSOECrusoe 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 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 New Product Introduction (NPI) Leader to prime the entire Crusoe system for Spark. The Group Product Manager defines what the Spark product must be and on what timeline. You make Crusoe Industries, Supply Chain, Quality, and every other function ready to deliver it, through a phase gate framework you own and release decisions you hold. You do not design the product and you do not own the factory. You do own the program, and you run it. You set the sequence, drive the builds, define what readiness means at each gate, verify it against evidence, and hold the gate closed when the system is not ready, under schedule pressure, to people who outrank you. You will start as the single-threaded owner of this function and build the team as volume scales. What You'll Be Working On: I. Gate Framework & Release Authority Framework Ownership: Own the five phase Spark NPI framework: Concept and Feasibility, Design and Development, Prototype and Verification, Pilot and Pre-Production, and Launch and Scale. Set entry and exit criteria and run every gate review. Product Management and Technical Project Management are standing participants. Release Authority: Hold the design freeze and production release decisions. Gates 2 and 4 clear only when the product acceptance criteria set by Product Management and the manufacturing readiness criteria you define are both met. Gate Discipline: No unverified risk passes a gate without explicit sign-off and an action plan with an owner and a date. A flaw caught in Phase 2 costs a fraction of the same flaw in Phase 4. Readiness Assessment: Maintain a readiness scorecard modeled on Manufacturing Readiness Level and Production Readiness Review practice. Make readiness measured, not asserted. Design Baseline & Change Control: Freeze the baseline at the close of Phase 2 and chair the change control board from there, managing ECO and ECN flow through PLM. Product Management sets cut-in intent; you set cut-in timing. Package Completeness: Verify each release package is complete and buildable before it leaves engineering: drawings, specifications, indented BOM, interface control documents, test procedures, and compliance documentation. II. Program Execution Across the Crusoe System Demand Definition: Translate the product roadmap into dated, specific readiness demands on Crusoe Industries, Supply Chain, Quality, and Field Operations. Every function knows what it owes, and by when, before the phase begins. Progr…