Senior Full Stack Rust Engineer, Contract - US

JobCubby; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 72,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

DEPT® is seeking a Full Stack Rust Engineer to join the team as a hands‑on contributor building and maintaining production Rust applications. This role spans backend systems engineering, database query development, and frontend contribution — with the center of gravity firmly on backend Rust development in a distributed, containerized environment.

This is a build‑and‑ship role. The successful candidate writes production Rust, debugs production Rust, and owns the quality and performance of the

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience creating and managing Rust applications in production environments.
• Proficiency with Rust's ownership model, lifetime system, trait system, and error handling patterns.
• Experience with the async Rust ecosystem (Tokio, async-std, or equivalent runtimes).
• Proficiency with common Rust web frameworks (Actix, Axum, Warp, or equivalent).
• Ability to debug production Rust applications: panics, memory issues, deadlocks, and performance bottlenecks.
• Strong systems/backend engineering experience in a production setting.
• Experience designing and building APIs, background workers, data pipelines, or other backend services that run reliably at scale.
• SQL and Data: strong experience creating scalable and efficient SQL queries, including complex joins, window functions, indexing, and query plan analysis.
• Experience with PostgreSQL/MySQL in production.
• Familiarity with testing best practices in Rust and broader software engineering.
• Experience writing and maintaining unit tests, integration tests, and fuzz tests.
• Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and deployment/testing workflows.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized environments.
• Observability and alerting: logging, tracing, metrics.
• Ability to communicate effectively with team members at all levels.
• Willingness to mentor junior engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain production Rust applications, including backend services, APIs, and system-level components.
• Write and optimize complex SQL queries for performance and correctness at scale.
• Debug and troubleshoot Rust applications in production environments, including memory safety issues, concurrency bugs, and performance regressions.
• Contribute to frontend development using React where needed, including integration with micro frontend architectures.
• Participate in the design and implementation of microservice and distributed system architectures.
• Write and maintain comprehensive test suites: unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests following established best practices.
• Deploy, monitor, and maintain services in containerized Kubernetes environments.
• Implement and maintain observability (logging, metrics, tracing) and alerting for mission-critical distributed systems.
• Communicate technical decisions and trade-offs clearly to team members at all levels.
• Mentor junior engineers on Rust best practices, systems design, and production engineering discipline.

Skills

Rust experience

Backend engineering

Async Rust

Rust web frameworks

Debugging production Rust

APIs & data pipelines

SQL queries

Relational databases

Testing in Rust

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Observability

Communication

Mentoring

Tools

Kubernetes

PostgreSQL

MySQL

OpenTelemetry

Jaeger

Prometheus

Grafana

React

Actix

Axum

Warp

Job description

WHY DEPT®?

We are pioneers at heart. What this means, is that we are always leaning forward, thinking of what we can create tomorrow that does not exist today. We were born digital and we are a new model of agency, with a deep skillset in tech and marketing. That’s why we hire curious, self-driven, talented people who never stop innovating.

Our culture is big enough to cope and small enough to care. Meaning, that with people across 20+ countries, we’re big enough to provide you with the best tools, global opportunities, and benefits that help you thrive. While acting small by investing in you, your growth, your team, and giving you the autonomy to solve our clients' problems, no matter where you are in the world.

The Role:

We are seeking a Full Stack Rust Engineer to join the team as a hands‑on contributor building and maintaining production Rust applications. This role spans backend systems engineering, database query development, and frontend contribution — with the center of gravity firmly on backend Rust development in a distributed, containerized environment. This is a build‑and‑ship role. The successful candidate writes production Rust, debugs production Rust, and owns the quality and performance of the systems they deliver.

What You’ll Do:

• Design, develop, and maintain production Rust applications, including backend services, APIs, and system‑level components
• Write and optimize complex SQL queries for performance and correctness at scale
• Debug and troubleshoot Rust applications in production environments, including memory safety issues, concurrency bugs, and performance regressions
• Contribute to frontend development using React where needed, including integration with micro frontend architectures
• Participate in the design and implementation of microservice and distributed system architectures
• Write and maintain comprehensive test suites: unit tests, integration tests, and end-toend tests following established best practices
• Deploy, monitor, and maintain services in containerized Kubernetes environments
• Implement and maintain observability (logging, metrics, tracing) and alerting for missioncritical distributed systems
• Communicate technical decisions and trade‑offs clearly to team members at all levels
• Mentor junior engineers on Rust best practices, systems design, and production engineering discipline
• Leverage agentic coding assistive tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude CLI) responsibly to accelerate development while maintaining code quality and security standards

What You Bring:

• 5+ years of experience creating and managing Rust applications in production environments
• Strong command of Rust's ownership model, lifetime system, trait system, and error handling patterns
• Experience with the async Rust ecosystem (Tokio, async-std, or equivalent runtimes)
• Proficiency with common Rust web frameworks and libraries (Actix, Axum, Warp, or equivalent)
• Demonstrated ability to debug Rust applications in production: diagnosing panics, memory issues, deadlocks, and performance bottlenecks
• Strong systems/backend engineering experience in a production setting — this is not a prototyping or research role
• Experience designing and building APIs, background workers, data pipelines, or other backend services that run reliably at scale
• SQL and Data Strong experience creating scalable and efficient SQL queries, including complex joins, window functions, indexing strategy, and query plan analysis
• Experience working with relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, or equivalent) in production
• Familiarity with testing best practices in Rust and broader software engineering
• Experience writing and maintaining unit tests, integration tests, and ideally propertybased or fuzz tests
• Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and how testing fits into a production deployment workflow
• Knowledge of Kubernetes and containerized environments: deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting services running in containers
• Experience with observability and alerting in mission‑critical distributed systems: structured logging, distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, or equivalent), metrics (Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent), and alerting configuration
• Ability to communicate effectively with team members at all levels — engineers, product managers, and leadership
• Willingness and ability to mentor junior engineers: code review, pair programming, and knowledge sharing on Rust and systems engineering topics

Compensation:

Rate is up to $87 hourly on a Fixed Term, W2 Contract. Contracts are evaluated quarterly, or every three months, for this project, and will likely extend. This is based on a 40-hour workweek and leveling. Keep in mind, we're flexible.

WE SUPPORT YOU BEING YOU:

DEPT® is an equal opportunity employer (EOE). We believe our work is its best when our people feel safe and free to be themselves. We’re committed to an inclusive and barrier‑free recruitment and selection process and workplace, regardless of anyone’s lived experience, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, and genetic information. So tell us about any accommodations you need. It’s totally confidential and only used to make sure you feel fully supported at every step.

DEPT® participates in E‑Verify, meaning your Form I‑9 information will be sent to the federal government to confirm you are authorized to work in the U.S.

We are a B Corp‑certified company passionate about purpose‑driven work. Our hope is that you can feel good about the contributions DEPT® is making to the world and we always have an open door for your ideas in making the world a better place.

DEPT® is a pioneering technology and marketing services company that creates integrated end‑to‑end digital experiences for brands such as Google, KFC, Philips, Audi, Twitch, Patagonia, eBay and more. Its team of 2,500+ digital specialists across 30+ locations on 5 continents delivers pioneering work on a global scale with a boutique culture.

Learn more about DEPT®

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, & INCLUSION

At DEPT®, we take pride in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We actively seek to recruit, develop, nurture, and retain talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, with varying skills and perspectives.

We believe in giving everyone a fair chance to shine.

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