Role description
People Research Scientist
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:
We're looking for a People Research Scientist to join our People Science and Workforce Intelligence team. You'll be the research lead for the wider People organization bringing scientific rigor to the questions that matter most as Crusoe scales: how well do we hire, what makes people stay, grow and do great work here, and which of our investments actually make a difference.
The role sits where organizational science, behavioral research and people strategy meet. You'll build frameworks and run systematic research that shape people decisions at one of the fastest-growing companies in AI infrastructure.
You'll study a workforce few people science teams ever see. Our workforce spans a high-growth tech company, a distributed manufacturing operation, and a field organization building and running data centers internationally.
What You'll Be Working On:
Own research design and scientific inquiry
Form and test hypotheses about people programs, employee behavior and workforce outcomes using rigorous experimental and quasi-experimental methods.
Run longitudinal studies to learn what creates long-term success, engagement, and retention as we scale.
Synthesize external research and industry evidence on people interventions to find best practices and gaps.
Partner cross-functionally to design and run systematic studies on employee experience, manager effectiveness and organizational health across corporate, engineering and field teams.
Apply sound research ethics and data privacy practices to all employee research.
Program effectiveness and impact
Build evaluation plans into people programs from the start, including onboarding, manager development, learning, recognition, and retention or compensation programs.
Estimate program impact using quasi-experimental methods such as staged rollouts, difference-in-differences, matching and regression discontinuity.
Define success measures and leading indicators that tie people programs to business outcomes such as time to productivity, retention of critical talent, and site readiness.
Give clear recommendations on what to scale, change or stop.
Selection science and hiring research
Partner with Talent Acquisition to design and validate structured interviews
Run validation studies that link hiring signals to on-the-job performance and retention.
Monitor adverse impact and fairness across hiring stages, and advise on legally defensible, job-related selection practices.
Evaluate any AI-assisted hiring tools for validity, fairness and candidate experience before and after rollout.
Act as a POC for assessment vendor relationships where scale/speed require additional support.
Employee listening and survey research
Help scale Crusoe's listening strategy, including engagement, pulse and lifecycle surveys.
Use psychometric methods to validate survey instruments and make sure measurement is reliable across job families and locations.
Reach frontline and field employees, and account for the response and sampling challenges of a distributed workforce.
Turn findings into recommendations and actions that leaders can own.
Visualization and communication
Build clear visualizations that make complex findings easy to understand for different audiences.
Present findings and actionable recommendations to executive leadership.
Partner with the rest of the People Science & Workforce Intelligence team to build self-service analytics and products that let HR business partners and People team answer their own questions.
What You'll Bring to the Team:
A Master's or PhD in I/O Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Behavioral Science or a related research field.
Intellectual humility that balances rigor with pragmatism.
Experience with applied experimental design, hypothesis testing, longitudinal methods and causal inference.
Experience with survey design, psychometric methods and employee listening programs.
The ability to work with structured and unstructured data via SQL, Python or R
Experience in statistical analysis.
Comfort working with cross-functional partners in a wide range of business functions
Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence stakeholders at every level with data visualization and storytelling skills.
You enjoy challenging assumptions with data and changing established practices with objective analysis
You enjoy teaching as much as you do learning from others.
Bonus Points
At least 5 years in research, analytics or related quantitative work, with demonstrated depth in research methods.
A background in people analytics specifically.
Selection and assessment experience, including validation studies, adverse impact analysis, and familiarity with the Uniform Guidelines and SIOP Principles.
Experience evaluating HR or L&D programs with quasi-experimental designs.
Deep knowledge of manager effectiveness research and organizational science.
Experience studying frontline, field, skilled-trades or operations workforces.
Experience at a high-growth technology, AI/ML, energy or infrastructure company.
Familiarity with network analysis, NLP for open-text feedback, or advanced statistical methods.
Experience with BigQuery, Snowflake, or similar tools.
Experience with Workday, Rippling, Ashby, Lattice or TeamOhana.
Benefits:
Competitive compensation and equity packages
Restricted Stock Units
Paid time off, paid holidays & leave of absence programs
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
Global travel insurance & emergency assistance
Daily meals allowance
Additional perks & programs specific to location
Compensation Range
Compensation will be paid in the range of up to $160,000 - $195,000 + 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.
Crusoe is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, citizenship, marital status, sex/gender, sexual preference/ orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, national origin, or any other status protected by law or regulation.