Principal Systems Engineer (C++) - AI Infrastructure
About this role
About the Role What if your systems engineering expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI models? We're looking for a Principal C++ Systems Engineer to design and build high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure used by leading AI research labs. This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for an experienced engineer who thrives on solving hard problems at scale — someone who cares deeply about performance, reliability, and clean systems design. - 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 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 memory safety across production C++ codebases - Collaborate closely with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows - Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in system behavior, then implement scalable, maintainable solutions - 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 - Full-stack developer with a strong systems programming background - 5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade C++ for large-scale systems - Advanced knowledge of build system architecture and package management strategies - Experienced designing reliable systems with rigorous error handling and memory sanitizers - Self-directed and capable of committing 20–40 hours per week in a remote contract environment 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 with distributed systems or developer tooling - Background working alongside research or applied ML teams Why Join Us - Work on real production systems at the frontier of AI — not toy projects - Collaborate with top-tier AI labs and researchers on genuinely high-impact work - Fully remote and flexible — structure your hours around your life - Freelance autonomy with the depth and consistency of meaningful, ongoing technical work - Potential for contract extension and expanded scope as projects evolve
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