Backend & Tooling Engineer (Rust)
About this role
About the Role What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI? We're looking for a Senior Rust Engineer to build the data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on to train and benchmark their most advanced models. This is high-impact, production-grade work — not toy projects or throwaway scripts. You'll be embedded in real engineering workflows, solving hard systems problems alongside data, research, and engineering teams at the frontier of AI development. - Organization: Alignerr - Type: Hourly Contract - Location: Remote - Commitment: 20–40 hours/week What You'll Do - Design, build, and optimize high-performance systems in Rust powering AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack backend services and CLI tooling for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control - Improve reliability, safety, and performance across production Rust codebases - Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows - Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in data and system behavior — then implement scalable, well-reasoned fixes - Participate in synchronous design and code reviews to iterate on architecture and implementation decisions Who You Are - Native or fluent English speaker with strong written and verbal communication skills - 5+ years of professional experience writing production Rust — you know the language deeply, not just the basics - Proven track record building high-performance backend web services and robust, user-friendly CLI tools - Experienced with type-safe database interactions and connection pooling for large-scale data workloads - Able to commit 20–40 hours per week with reliability and focus - Self-directed and comfortable working asynchronously across a remote team Nice to Have - Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or model evaluation systems - Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking infrastructure - Background in distributed systems or developer tooling - Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source Rust projects Why Join Us - Work on real production systems at the cutting edge of AI development - Collaborate directly with leading AI research labs on high-stakes infrastructure - Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best work - Freelance autonomy with meaningful, technically challenging work - Potential for ongoing engagement and expanded scope as projects evolve
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