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