About the Role
What if your deep C++ expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI systems? We're looking for a Principal Systems Engineer to design and build the high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure that leading AI labs depend on to train and improve next-generation models.
This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for senior engineers who want to work on real production systems with genuine impact — not toy projects.
- Organization: Alignerr
- Type: Hourly Contract
- Location: Remote
- Commitment: 20–40 hours/week
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and optimize high-performance C++ systems that power AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows
- Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control
- Harden reliability, performance, and memory safety across production C++ codebases
- Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation at scale
- Identify bottlenecks and edge cases across data and system behavior, then implement robust, scalable fixes
- Participate in synchronous design reviews to iterate on architecture and implementation decisions
Who You Are
- Native or fluent English speaker with clear written and verbal communication skills
- Experienced full-stack developer with a strong systems programming background
- 5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade C++ for large-scale systems
- Deep knowledge of build system architecture and package management strategies
- Proven experience designing reliable systems with rigorous error handling and memory safety (sanitizers, ASAN, TSAN, etc.)
- Able to commit 20–40 hours per week with consistency
Nice to Have
- Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or evaluation frameworks
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training infrastructure, or benchmarking systems
- Experience with distributed systems or developer tooling at scale
Why Join Us
- Work directly with leading AI labs on production systems that matter
- Fully remote and flexible — work when and where it suits you
- Freelance autonomy with the structure of meaningful, high-impact engineering work
- Collaborate with world-class data, research, and engineering teams pushing the frontier of AI
- Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch