Systems Programmer - AI Data Pipelines Edit listing

**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