Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) - AI Platform
About this role
About the Role What if your mastery of Rust could directly shape the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI? We're looking for a senior Rust engineer to build and lead the systems that sit at the heart of real AI production workflows — from high-throughput data pipelines to evaluation infrastructure used by leading AI labs. This isn't a sandbox project. You'll be working on real, high-impact systems that researchers and engineers depend on every day. - Organization: Alignerr - Type: Hourly Contract - Location: Remote - Commitment: 20–40 hours/week What You'll Do - Design and build high-performance, production-grade systems in Rust that power AI data pipelines and model evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack backend services and tooling for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control - Improve reliability, safety, and performance across existing Rust codebases — finding and fixing bottlenecks before they become problems - Collaborate closely with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation at scale - Identify edge cases and systemic failure points in data and system behavior, then implement scalable, lasting fixes - Lead synchronous design reviews, contributing architectural vision and driving implementation decisions Who You Are - Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills - 5+ years of professional experience writing production Rust, with strong focus on system architecture and API design - Deep expertise in FFI (Foreign Function Interface) and unsafe Rust — you know where the boundaries are and how to work them effectively - Advanced knowledge of asynchronous runtimes and multi-threaded environments — thread safety isn't an afterthought for you - Able to lead system design reviews and communicate technical decisions clearly to cross-functional teams - Available to commit 20–40 hours per week on a contract basis Nice to Have - Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or evaluation systems - Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking infrastructure - Experience building distributed systems or developer tooling at scale Why Join Us - Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside leading research labs — this is real production work, not toy projects - Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best thinking - Freelance autonomy with the structure and impact of meaningful, high-stakes engineering work - Collaborate with a network of top engineers and researchers pushing the frontier of AI development - Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch
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