Systems Programmer - AI Data Pipelines

Seattle

**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