Rust Software Engineer - Distributed Systems

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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