Rust Software Engineer - Distributed Systems
Senior Rust Engineer — AI Data & Infrastructure (AI Training) 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
What You'll Do
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 Who You Are 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
Nice to Have
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
Why Join Us
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