Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) - AI Platform
alignerrDenver (CO)
Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) - AI Platform
Posted 6 days ago
alignerrDenver (CO)
SENIORITY
Lead
About the role
Lead Systems Engineer (Rust) - AI Platform What if your mastery of Rust 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 — data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure — that leading AI labs depend on to train and improve their models. This is a fully remote, flexible contract role. You'll work on real production systems 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 Rust systems supporting large-scale AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows
- Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for data annotation, validation, and quality control
- Improve reliability, performance, and safety across existing Rust codebases
- Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in system and data behavior — then implement scalable, production-ready fixes
- Collaborate closely with research and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows
- Lead synchronous system design reviews and contribute architectural decisions that raise the bar across the codebase
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 understanding of asynchronous runtimes and thread safety in complex, multi-threaded environments
- A systems thinker who can lead technical discussions and drive architectural decisions with confidence
- Able to commit 20–40 hours per week consistently
Nice to Have:
- Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or evaluation systems
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking infrastructure
- Experience building distributed systems or developer tooling
Why Join Us:
- Work on cutting-edge AI infrastructure alongside top research labs and engineering teams
- Fully remote and async-friendly — work from wherever you do your best thinking
- Freelance autonomy with the depth and impact of meaningful, high-stakes engineering work
- Tackle genuinely hard systems problems that matter — your work directly influences how the world's most advanced AI models are built
- Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch
Before you apply
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Your profile is current
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Two examples you can talk through
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A number in mind
What you're on now and what would make you move. We negotiate better when we know both.
Your notice period
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Once you apply, someone reads it and calls you before anything reaches the employer — usually within two working days.