Systems Programmer — AI Data Pipelines
About The Role
What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI models? We're looking for a senior Rust engineer to design and build the high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on to train and improve their models.
This is a fully remote contract role working on real production systems — not toy projects. You'll collaborate directly with data, research, and engineering teams on infrastructure that matters at scale.
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 fixes
Participate in synchronous design reviews to iterate on system architecture and implementation decisions
Who You Are
Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills
3–5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade Rust
Deep command of Rust lifetimes, ownership mechanics, and idiomatic error handling — you write code that's safe and maintainable by design
Experienced building I/O-bound data pipelines with robust retry/backoff logic for production environments
Self-directed and reliable — able to commit 20–40 hours per week and deliver without hand-holding
You think in systems: performance, fault tolerance, and correctness aren't afterthoughts
Nice to Have
Prior experience with data annotation, data quality, or evaluation systems
Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking pipelines
Experience with distributed systems or developer tooling
Background working alongside research or ML engineering teams
Why Join Us
Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside top research labs and engineering teams
Fully remote — work from wherever you do your best work
Meaningful, high-impact work on systems that directly influence model quality at scale
Freelance autonomy with consistent, structured engagement
Potential for ongoing collaboration and contract extension as new projects launch