Backend & Tooling Engineer (Rust)

Backend & Tooling Engineer (Rust) — AI Infrastructure

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 and optimize the high-performance systems that leading AI labs depend on — from data pipelines and annotation tooling to evaluation frameworks that drive model improvement at scale.

This is a fully remote contract role with meaningful technical depth and real production impact. If you write serious Rust and care about building systems that are fast, safe, and reliable, this is the work you've been waiting for.

• Organization: Alignerr
• Type: Hourly Contract
• Location: Remote
• Commitment: 20–40 hours/week

What You'll Do

• Design, build, and optimize high-performance Rust systems supporting AI data pipelines and model evaluation workflows
• Develop backend services and full-stack tooling for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control
• Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing Rust codebases
• Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in data and system behavior — then implement scalable, production-grade fixes
• Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows
• Participate in synchronous design and code reviews to iterate on system architecture and implementation decisions

Who You Are

• Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills
• 5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade Rust
• Proven track record building high-performance backend web services and robust CLI tools
• Experienced with type-safe database interactions and connection pooling for large-scale data workloads
• Self-directed and reliable — able to commit 20–40 hours per week and deliver with minimal hand-holding
• Sharp systems thinker who takes pride in code that is fast, safe, and maintainable

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 with or alongside AI research teams

Why Join Us

• Work on production systems that directly influence how leading AI labs build and evaluate next-generation models
• Fully remote and flexible — work from anywhere, on a schedule that works for you
• Tackle genuinely hard engineering problems with real technical stakes
• Collaborate with sharp engineers and researchers across data, infrastructure, and AI
• Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as projects scale