Rust Engineer (Part Time)

Remotebase is seeking experienced Rust Developers for part-time engagements with fast-growing product companies worldwide. This opportunity is ideal for engineers who write production Rust and desire flexible, meaningful work alongside other commitments. You will be responsible for building and maintaining high-performance, reliable backend and systems software. Projects include backend services, APIs, infrastructure tooling, data pipelines, and performance-critical components.

Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain production-grade services and libraries using Rust.
- Write safe, idiomatic, and well-tested code with a strong focus on performance and memory efficiency.
- Build asynchronous services utilizing Tokio and frameworks such as Axum, Actix-web, or Tonic (gRPC).
- Profile and optimize critical code paths, addressing concurrency, latency, and memory-related issues.
- Integrate with databases, message queues, and cloud infrastructure to support scalable systems.
- Conduct code reviews, mentor junior engineers, and contribute to technical design decisions.
- Collaborate asynchronously with distributed teams, ensuring clear and effective written communication.

Required Qualifications
- Minimum of 5 years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 3 years working with production Rust.
- Deep understanding of Rust’s ownership model, borrowing, lifetimes, traits, and generics.
- Strong hands-on experience with async Rust, including Tokio, futures, and Send/Sync bounds.
- Proven track record building and operating backend services or systems software in production environments.
- Solid knowledge of concurrency, memory management, and performance profiling techniques.
- Proficiency in testing Rust code (unit, integration, property-based) and familiarity with CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience working with SQL or NoSQL databases such as Postgres or Redis, using crates like sqlx, Diesel, or SeaORM.
- Comfortable using Docker, Linux, and at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
- Strong written and spoken English communication skills.
- Reliable availability of approximately 20 hours per week, with at least 4 hours overlapping with US time zones.

Preferred Qualifications and Benefits
- Experience with unsafe Rust, Foreign Function Interface (FFI) involving C/C++ or Python (via PyO3), or WebAssembly.
- Background in embedded systems, networking, blockchain, or distributed systems.
- Contributions to open-source Rust projects or the broader Rust ecosystem.
- Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools such as tracing, OpenTelemetry, or Prometheus.
- Additional programming experience in C++ or Go is a plus.

Benefits
- Fully remote work with optional office presence, allowing you to choose your preferred work environment.
- Flexible scheduling to accommodate your personal and professional commitments.
- Competitive market compensation paid in USD.
- Opportunities for continuous learning and professional growth within a supportive community.

This role offers a unique chance to engage in challenging Rust development projects while maintaining flexibility and work-life balance. If you are passionate about Rust and eager to contribute to innovative systems, this position is an excellent fit.