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