Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) — AI Platform
About The Role
What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI systems? We're looking for a Senior Rust Full-Stack Engineer to build high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure for leading AI labs — working on systems that matter at scale.
This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for engineers who know Rust deeply and want to apply it to genuinely hard, high-impact problems 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 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
Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing Rust codebases
Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows
Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in data and system behavior, and implement scalable, production-ready fixes
Lead synchronous system design reviews and drive key architectural decisions
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 command of asynchronous runtimes and thread safety in complex, multi-threaded environments
Able to lead technical reviews and communicate design tradeoffs clearly to cross-functional teams
Available to commit 20–40 hours per week on a consistent basis
Nice to Have
Prior experience with data annotation, data quality, or evaluation systems
Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking pipelines
Experience building distributed systems or developer tooling
Background working with or alongside AI research teams
Why Join Us
Work directly on production systems and high-impact infrastructure for leading AI labs
Tackle genuinely hard Rust engineering challenges — not toy projects
Fully remote and flexible — work on a schedule that fits your life
Freelance autonomy combined with meaningful, technically rich work
Collaborate with world-class data, research, and engineering teams shaping the future of AI
Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch