Rust Engineer

We're working with a well-funded, highly selective AI infrastructure startup building silicon for large-scale AI inference and training. Founded by veteran chip architects who previously led a major AI hardware program at a top tech company, the business has grown fast and is backed by top-tier investors. They're looking for Rust engineers to help build best-in-class silicon for high-performance, sustainable GenAI, across compute, memory management, and high-speed connectivity. The Role The environment here is genuinely unusual for a Rust role: a custom, code-generated cycle-accurate model, built in Rust, sits at the center of the whole design flow, feeding architecture validation, RTL validation, and post-silicon validation, with hardware description largely generated from this model rather than handwritten. You'd work on the simulator and host-side interface library that make up this model, alongside writing the targeted and randomized tests that stress it. The team is also building AI directly into the flow itself, including retrieval, knowledge-graph, and automated-reasoning tooling. Scope isn't fixed here — they want versatile engineers who can move between core modelling, tooling, and testing rather than staying in one lane. Responsibilities Build and extend internal infrastructure and tooling in Rust to support hardware and software teams Design and implement the Rust-based simulator that underpins the verification flow Build the host-side interface library connecting software and hardware layers Write targeted and randomized tests to systematically surface corner cases and rare event sequences Partner across hardware, architecture and software teams to translate specifications into concrete, testable properties Requirements Production-level Rust experience — you've shipped real systems and are comfortable with ownership, traits, generics with bounds, and enums as sum types 3+ years of engineering experience with strong fundamentals: clean, well-tested, well-documented code, and comfort with build systems, version control and CI Comfortable with low-level systems concepts: memory layout, concurrency, bit manipulation Genuine interest in hardware and willingness to ramp up quickly Remote (with travel) or hybrid, based in the Bay Area Nice to Have Hands-on hardware experience in any form — FPGA, embedded systems, robotics, or prior hardware-adjacent roles; accelerator experience is a strong plus Experience with foreign function interfaces (Rust FFI ideal, any cross-language experience valuable) Exposure to formal methods, model checking or property-based testing (e.g. proptest, Kani) Understanding of computer architecture: pipelines, caches, memory hierarchies, on-chip interconnects Familiarity with ML systems/frameworks What Sets This Role Apart Tool-building culture: the design flow is built in-house, generated from a custom modelling layer rather than relying on legacy, vendor-driven methodology AI-native flow: active work integrating AI tooling (retrieval, knowledge graphs, automated reasoning) directly into design and verification Real ownership: your work feeds directly into production silicon at a company scaling fast Flexible scope: significant freedom to shape what you work on, from core modelling and tooling through to deeper architecture involvement Package & Process Compensation is highly competitive, with strong equity and full benefits.