About the Role
What if your systems engineering expertise could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI models? We're looking for a Principal C++ Systems Engineer to design and build high-performance data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation infrastructure used by leading AI research labs.
This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for an experienced engineer who thrives on solving hard problems at scale — someone who cares deeply about performance, reliability, and clean systems design.
- Organization: Alignerr
- Type: Hourly Contract
- Location: Remote
- Commitment: 20–40 hours/week
What You'll Do
- Design, build, and optimize high-performance C++ systems 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 memory safety across production C++ codebases
- Collaborate closely with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows
- Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in system behavior, then implement scalable, maintainable solutions
- 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
- Full-stack developer with a strong systems programming background
- 5+ years of professional experience writing production-grade C++ for large-scale systems
- Advanced knowledge of build system architecture and package management strategies
- Experienced designing reliable systems with rigorous error handling and memory sanitizers
- Self-directed and capable of committing 20–40 hours per week in a remote contract environment
Nice to Have
- Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or evaluation systems
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking infrastructure
- Experience with distributed systems or developer tooling
- Background working alongside research or applied ML teams
Why Join Us
- Work on real production systems at the frontier of AI — not toy projects
- Collaborate with top-tier AI labs and researchers on genuinely high-impact work
- Fully remote and flexible — structure your hours around your life
- Freelance autonomy with the depth and consistency of meaningful, ongoing technical work
- Potential for contract extension and expanded scope as projects evolve