Systems Programmer - AI Data Pipelines
About this role
About the Role What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI models? We're looking for a senior Rust engineer to design and build the high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on to train and improve their models. This is a fully remote contract role working on real production systems — not toy projects. You'll collaborate directly with data, research, and engineering teams on infrastructure that matters at scale. - 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 supporting AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control - Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing 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, and implement scalable fixes - Participate in synchronous design reviews to iterate on system architecture and implementation decisions Who You Are - Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills - 3–5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade Rust - Deep command of Rust lifetimes, ownership mechanics, and idiomatic error handling — you write code that's safe and maintainable by design - Experienced building I/O-bound data pipelines with robust retry/backoff logic for production environments - Self-directed and reliable — able to commit 20–40 hours per week and deliver without hand-holding - You think in systems: performance, fault tolerance, and correctness aren't afterthoughts Nice to Have - Prior experience with data annotation, data quality, or evaluation systems - Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking pipelines - Experience with distributed systems or developer tooling - Background working alongside research or ML engineering teams Why Join Us - Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside top research labs and engineering teams - Fully remote — work from wherever you do your best work - Meaningful, high-impact work on systems that directly influence model quality at scale - Freelance autonomy with consistent, structured engagement - Potential for ongoing collaboration and contract extension as new projects launch
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