Rust Backend Engineer – Build Scalable Distributed Systems

iO Associates; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

iO Associates is seeking a Backend Software Engineer in London for a hybrid role. You will design and implement distributed backend systems, storage, and platform primitives using Rust with Python at API boundaries, contributing to scalable data pipelines and services.

You will join a small, autonomous team at an early-stage company, shaping product direction, customer value, and engineering culture while balancing rapid delivery with robust, well-architected solutions.

Qualifications

• Minimum 2 years in industry.
• Experience designing and building backend services.
• Proficiency with Rust and Python in production environments.
• Experience with large-scale data infrastructure is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Design and build distributed systems, storage, and platform primitives.
• Work across the backend surface: APIs, data pipelines, and service architecture.
• Own architectural decisions to scale with petabyte-scale data storage.

Skills

Rust

Python

Distributed systems

AI-assisted development

System design

Collaboration

Tools

Kafka

PostgreSQL

TimescaleDB

PostGIS

gRPC

Protobuf

Kubernetes

Job description

iO Associates is seeking a Backend Software Engineer in London for a hybrid role. You will design and implement distributed backend systems, storage, and platform primitives using Rust with Python at API boundaries, contributing to scalable data pipelines and services.

You will join a small, autonomous team at an early-stage company, shaping product direction, customer value, and engineering culture while balancing rapid delivery with robust, well-architected solutions.