Senior Rust Systems Engineer – Autonomous Drone AI

Helsing; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote or hybrid work depending on the

Position-based perks and benefits

Job summary

Helsing is building Altra, an AI-powered drone software platform. As a senior systems engineer, you will design and implement Rust services powering autonomous capabilities in demanding environments.

You will collaborate with ML engineers, tackle low-latency networking, and contribute across the stack while ensuring reliability on resource-constrained hardware. A 5+ year track record and a CS-related degree are expected, with US citizenship required.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in systems-level software engineering.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Proficient in Rust, or strong experience in C++ or another systems-level language with willingness to use Rust daily.
• Experience building distributed systems in unreliable or constrained networks.
• Experience with real-time or low-latency systems where performance and reliability are critical.
• Experience with AI/ML pipelines interfaces; streaming data to models and pipeline orchestration.
• Familiar with Python for interfacing with ML/AI components.
• U.S. citizenship required.

Responsibilities

• Designing, building, and maintaining Rust services across the Altra platform.
• Collaborating with ML engineers to integrate AI/ML pipelines into the broader system.
• Working across the stack, from networking and protocol implementation to application-level services.
• Contributing to increasingly advanced autonomy features.
• Developing and testing software using simulation environments.
• Writing software that must perform reliably on resource-constrained platforms under real-world constraints.

Skills

Rust

Distributed systems

Real-time systems

C++

Python

AI/ML pipelines

Video streaming

Pub/Sub messaging

Embedded systems

Robotics

Protocol design

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering

Job description

Helsing is building Altra, an AI-powered drone software platform. As a senior systems engineer, you will design and implement Rust services powering autonomous capabilities in demanding environments.

You will collaborate with ML engineers, tackle low-latency networking, and contribute across the stack while ensuring reliability on resource-constrained hardware. A 5+ year track record and a CS-related degree are expected, with US citizenship required.