Rust Engineer

I’m currently working with an early-stage infrastructure company building high-performance distributed systems, with Rust at the core of the stack, who are looking for a Head of Engineering to lead the design, build, and scale of a genuinely differentiated systems architecture.This is a pivotal role reporting directly to the CTO, owning the core engineering stack and leading a small but highly capable team. The business is building a new approach to real-time data and system infrastructure, designed to remove traditional dependencies on external services through a more tightly integrated, systems-native architecture.You’ll remain hands-on technically while driving engineering standards, roadmap execution, and team growth.This is a rare opportunity to join at the right stage and shape both the technology and engineering culture of a high-performance infrastructure platform with significant upside. Responsibilities Own engineering across distributed systems, backend infrastructure, storage systems, APIs, and real-time data pipelines.Lead development of high-performance Rust-based services and distributed compute components.Drive performance optimisation across low-latency systems, event-driven architectures, and high-throughput workloads.Partner with the CTO on technical strategy, hiring plans, and roadmap execution.Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineers while staying close to the codebase.Own system design standards, internal tooling, and technical documentation practices.Support production incidents where needed and continuously improve system reliability. Requirements Strong background in systems programming using Rust, Go, C++, or similar.Deep distributed systems knowledge including concurrency, replication, fault tolerance, and system design trade-offs.Experience building backend infrastructure, real-time systems, or high-reliability production platforms.Strong understanding of storage systems, data processing, and performance optimisation under load.Previous leadership experience managing and growing engineering teams.If you’re an experienced engineering leader or senior systems engineer looking to step into a role where you can shape a Rust-first infrastructure platform from the ground up, then apply or get in touch directly.