This study aimed to optimize the culture conditions to improve the crude biosurfactant activity of Bacillus pumilus IJ-1, using a 3³ full-factorial design of response surface methodology (RSM). It was found that submerged fermentation of B. pumilus improved the activity of the crude biosurfactant. The factors selected for optimization were NaCl concentration, temperature, and tryptone concentration. Response surface analysis revealed that the fitted quadratic model was statistically significant and produced an adequate R² value (0.9898) and a low probability value (<0.0001). The optimum level for each factor was found to be 0.567% (w/v) NaCl, 21.851℃ and 0.765% (w/v) tryptone, respectively. Crude biosurfactant activity was found to be most affected by tryptone concentration; then temperature, and finally NaCl concentration. Our results may potentially facilitate large-scale biosurfactant production from B. pumilus IJ-1.