Backend & Tooling Engineer (Rust)

About the Role

What if your Rust expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI? We're looking for a Senior Rust Engineer to build the data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on to train and benchmark their most advanced models.

This is high-impact, production-grade work — not toy projects or throwaway scripts. You'll be embedded in real engineering workflows, solving hard systems problems alongside data, research, and engineering teams 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 powering AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows
• Develop full-stack backend services and CLI tooling for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control
• Improve reliability, safety, and performance across production 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 — then implement scalable, well-reasoned fixes
• Participate in synchronous design and code reviews to iterate on architecture and implementation decisions

Who You Are

• Native or fluent English speaker with strong written and verbal communication skills
• 5+ years of professional experience writing production Rust — you know the language deeply, not just the basics
• Proven track record building high-performance backend web services and robust, user-friendly CLI tools
• Experienced with type-safe database interactions and connection pooling for large-scale data workloads
• Able to commit 20–40 hours per week with reliability and focus
• Self-directed and comfortable working asynchronously across a remote team

Nice to Have

• Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or model evaluation systems
• Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking infrastructure
• Background in distributed systems or developer tooling
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source Rust projects

Why Join Us

• Work on real production systems at the cutting edge of AI development
• Collaborate directly with leading AI research labs on high-stakes infrastructure
• Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best work
• Freelance autonomy with meaningful, technically challenging work
• Potential for ongoing engagement and expanded scope as projects evolve