Rust Software Engineer - Distributed Systems
About this role
About the Role What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI models? We're looking for a Senior Rust Full-Stack Engineer to build and optimize the data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on every day. This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for an experienced engineer who lives and breathes Rust and wants to work on genuinely high-impact, production-grade systems — not toy problems. - Organization: Alignerr - Type: Hourly Contract - Location: Remote - Commitment: 20–40 hours/week What You'll Do - Design, build, and optimize high-performance distributed systems in Rust supporting AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control - Hunt down and resolve complex concurrency issues — deadlocks, race conditions, and subtle async bugs - Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing Rust codebases - Collaborate closely with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows - Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in system behavior and implement scalable, production-ready fixes - Participate in synchronous design reviews and iterate on architecture decisions with sharp peers Who You Are - 3–5+ years of professional experience writing production Rust — this is a must, not a nice-to-have - Strong background building distributed services using RPC frameworks, distributed state, or consensus protocols - Proven ability to debug complex concurrency issues using async instrumentation and tracing tools - Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills - Self-directed and reliable — you can commit to 20–40 hours per week and deliver without hand-holding - You care about code quality, correctness, and safety as much as you care about shipping Nice to Have - Prior experience with data annotation systems, data quality pipelines, or AI evaluation infrastructure - Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking pipelines - Experience with developer tooling, systems programming, or high-throughput data infrastructure Why Join Us - Work on real production systems powering cutting-edge AI research alongside leading AI labs - Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best thinking - Meaningful, technically interesting work — no CRUD apps, no filler projects - Freelance autonomy with the structure of a focused, collaborative engineering team - Potential for ongoing engagement and expanded scope as new projects launch
Application listings
Choose a source listing and check its country requirements.