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

Work arrangement
Yes