Software Engineering Technical Referent - RUST

dLocal; Barcelona; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

dLocal in Barcelona is seeking a senior backend engineer to design and lead Rust-based, high-throughput payment services. You will own concurrency models, async execution, and performance profiling, delivering scalable systems that meet strict SLA requirements.

You will mentor a Rust-focused team, set engineering standards, and collaborate with stakeholders across the business. Fluent English and a strong foundation in distributed systems are essential.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in distributed systems.
• 4+ years Rust production experience.
• Hire and grow a Rust-focused engineering group.
• Deep understanding of systems design, memory, and concurrency.
• Write safe, idiomatic Rust with performance focus.
• Experience with AWS.
• Strong event-driven architecture design.
• Excellent English communication.
• Collaborative leader with tech and non-tech stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering/CS or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Design and lead the architecture of high-throughput, low-latency payment services written in Rust, handling thousands of requests per second with strict SLA requirements.
• Own concurrency models, async execution strategies (Tokio-based systems), memory safety trade-offs, and performance profiling at the systems level.
• Define service boundaries, event-driven contracts, and resilience patterns (idempotency, retries, backpressure, circuit breakers).
• Establish Rust engineering standards across the organization: crate selection policies, dependency management, error handling patterns, testing strategy, and production hardening.
• Lead performance benchmarking, load testing, and capacity planning for Rust-based services.

Skills

Rust programming

Distributed systems architecture

Concurrency

Memory management

Performance profiling

Tokio-based

English communication

Leadership

Education

CS/Software Eng degree

Tools

AWS

Tokio

Job description

dLocal started with one goal – to close the payments innovation gap between global enterprise companies, and customers in emerging economies. We have over 1000 payment methods, in more than 60 countries.We are relentlessly focusing on serving our customers and solidifying our position as the preferred infrastructure solution for Global Merchants across Emerging Markets.With the ability to accept local payment methods and facilitate cross-border fund settlement worldwide, our merchants reach billions of underserved consumers in the high-growth markets of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. dLocal offers the ideal payment solutions for global commerce:

• Payins: Accept local payment methods
• Payouts: Compliantly send funds cross-borderdLocal for
• Platforms: Unify your platform’s payment solution
• Defense Suite: Manage fraud effectively

What you'll be doing

• Design and lead the architecture of high-throughput, low-latency payment services written in Rust, handling thousands of requests per second with strict SLA requirements.
• Own concurrency models, async execution strategies (Tokio-based systems), memory safety trade-offs, and performance profiling at the systems level.
• Define service boundaries, event-driven contracts, and resilience patterns (idempotency, retries, backpressure, circuit breakers).
• Establish Rust engineering standards across the organization: crate selection policies, dependency management, error handling patterns, testing strategy, and production hardening.
• Lead performance benchmarking, load testing, and capacity planning for Rust-based services.

What skills you'll need

• Minimum of 10 years of professional experience building high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems.
• 4+ years of professional Rust experience in production backend systems (not academic or hobby projects).
• Hire, mentor, and grow a Rust-focused engineering group.
• Deep understanding of systems design principles, memory management, and concurrency patterns.
• Ability to write clean, efficient, and idiomatic Rust code with a strong focus on safety and performance.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS.
• Solid experience with event-driven architecture design.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills in English.
• A collaborative mindset and leadership skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Optional but highly valued: Professional experience in Go or Java for building large-scale, cloud-native applications is a significant plus.