Systems Software Engineer - Machine Learning Ops
Role summary
Alignerr is seeking a senior Systems Software Engineer specializing in Machine Learning Operations for a fully remote, flexible contract role. The ideal candidate will have deep C++ expertise and 5+ years of experience writing production-grade, performance-critical code. This role involves designing, building, and optimizing C++ systems for AI data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems. Responsibilities include developing full-stack tooling, backend services, and improving system reliability and performance in production AI environments. Familiarity with hardware acceleration APIs and distributed systems is a plus. This is an opportunity to work on impactful infrastructure shaping the future of AI development.
Systems Software Engineer — Machine Learning Ops
About The Role
What if your systems engineering skills could directly shape the infrastructure powering the world's most advanced AI models? We're looking for a senior C++ engineer to build and optimize the data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on to train and ship next-generation models.
This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for a seasoned engineer who knows C++ deeply and thrives working on high-impact, production-grade systems. If you've spent years writing performance-critical code and want to apply that expertise at the cutting edge of AI development, this is the role for you.
- 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 safety across existing C++ codebases used in production AI environments
- 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, maintainable 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
- Full-stack developer with a strong systems programming background and deep C++ expertise
- 5+ years of professional experience writing production C++ code
- Experienced working with the C++ frontends of ML frameworks or inference runtimes
- Familiar with hardware acceleration APIs for optimizing model inference
- Able to commit 20–40 hours per week with consistency and reliability
Nice to Have
- Prior experience with data annotation, data quality pipelines, or evaluation systems
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training, or benchmarking pipelines
- Experience with distributed systems design or developer tooling
- Background in performance profiling, debugging, or systems reliability engineering
Why Join Us
- Work on real production systems used by leading AI research labs
- Fully remote and flexible — work when and where it suits you
- Freelance autonomy with the structure of meaningful, impactful technical work
- Contribute directly to infrastructure that shapes the future of AI development
- Potential for ongoing work and contract extension as new projects launch