Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) - AI Platform

About this role

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 e...