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 optimize the high-performance systems — data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure — that leading AI labs depend on to train and improve their models. This is a fully remote, flexible contract role. You'll work on real production systems alongside data, research, and engineering teams at the frontier of AI development. - Organization: Alignerr - Type: Hourly Contract - Location: Remote - Commitment: 20–40 hours/week What You'll Do - Design, build, and optimize high-performance Rust systems supporting large-scale AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows - Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for data annotation, validation, and quality control - Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing Rust codebases - Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in system and data behavior — then implement scalable, production-ready fixes - Collaborate closely with research and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows - Lead synchronous system design reviews and contribute architectural decisions that raise the bar across the codebase Who You Are - Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills - 5+ years of professional experience writing production Rust, with a strong focus on system architecture and API design - Deep expertise in FFI (Foreign Function Interface) and unsafe Rust boundaries to optimize cross-language interactions - Advanced understanding of asynchronous runtimes and thread safety in complex, multi-threaded environments - A systems thinker who can lead technical discussions and drive architectural decisions with confidence - Able to commit 20–40 hours per week consistently 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 Why Join Us - Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside top research labs and engineering teams - Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best thinking - Freelance autonomy with the depth and impact of meaningful, high-stakes engineering work - Tackle genuinely hard systems problems that matter — your work directly influences how the world's most advanced AI models are built - Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch
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