Principal Systems Engineer (C++) - AI Infrastructure
About this role
About the Role What if your deep C++ expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI systems? We're looking for a seasoned C++ Systems Engineer to design and build high-performance pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure used by leading AI labs at the frontier of model development. This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for engineers who thrive on complex systems problems and want their work to matter at scale. - Organization: Alignerr - Type: Hourly Contract - Location: Remote - Commitment: 20–40 hours/week What You'll Do - Design, build, and optimize high-performance C++ systems supporting large-scale AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for data annotation, validation, and quality control at scale - Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing production C++ codebases - Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in data and system behavior, and implement robust, scalable solutions - Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows - Participate in synchronous design reviews to iterate on architecture and implementation decisions Who You Are - Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills - 5+ years of professional experience writing production C++ for large-scale systems - Strong full-stack development background with deep systems programming expertise - Advanced knowledge of build system architecture and package management strategies - Experienced designing reliable, production-grade systems with rigorous error handling - Proficient with memory sanitizers and tooling to ensure memory safety - Able to commit 20–40 hours per week consistently 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 design or developer tooling Why Join Us - Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside leading research labs at the frontier of AI - Fully remote and flexible — work when and where it suits you - Freelance autonomy with the structure of meaningful, high-impact engineering work - Contribute directly to systems that shape how next-generation AI models are built and evaluated - Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch
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