Software Developer Lead Rust Developer

Job description

**Introduction**

A career in IBM Software means you’ll be part of a team that transforms our customer’s challenges into solutions.


Seeking new possibilities and always staying curious, we are a team dedicated to creating the world’s leading AI-powered, cloud-native software solutions for our customers.

Our renowned legacy creates endless global opportunities for our IBMers, so the door is always open for those who want to grow their career.


IBM’s product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure.

Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

**Your role and responsibilities**

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Rust Developer to lead the performance transformation initiative for ContextForge MCP Gateway.


ContextForge is an open-source production-grade gateway, proxy, and registry for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and A2A Agents.

It federates MCP and REST services, providing unified discovery, auth, rate-limiting, observability, virtual servers, multi-transport protocols, plugins and an Admin UI: https://github.com/IBM/mcp-context-forge


As the technical leader of Rust adoption, you will drive architectural decisions, establish Rust standards, and mentor the team while delivering 10-50x performance improvements.

As a Senior Rust Developer, you will own the architecture and implementation of performance-critical components, establish Rust best practices across the organization, and collaborate with the CTO and Engineering Manager on technology strategy.

This role requires deep Rust expertise, systems design experience, and strong technical leadership.


Your Role And Responsibilities


Architectural Leadership


• Lead Rust architecture strategy for performance-critical components


• Design system boundaries between Rust and Python services


• Establish Rust coding standards, patterns, and best practices


• Collaborate with CTO on technology roadmap and Rust adoption strategy


• Drive technical decisions for Rust infrastructure and tooling


• Plan future Rust microservices extraction from monolithic Python application


Performance Engineering


• Own performance transformation: 10-50x throughput, sub-millisecond latency goals


• Design and implement mcpgateway.wrapper rewrite: Tokio, hyper, gRPC/tonic


• Design and implement mcpgateway.translate and mcpgateway.proxy rewrite: Axum/Actix-web, zero-copy streaming


• Implement high-performance plugins in Rust


• Implement multiple MCP Servers in Rust


• Implement core performance components in Rust bindings for Python (e.g. PyO3 or similar)


• Establish performance benchmarking strategy: criterion.rs, continuous monitoring


• Optimize memory usage, CPU efficiency, and I/O performance


• Conduct deep performance analysis: profiling, flamegraphs, bottleneck elimination


System Design & Integration


• Design Rust-Python interop: gRPC services, REST APIs, FFI when necessary


• Create clean abstractions for protocol handling and transport layers


• Design async patterns with Tokio: task spawning, channels, concurrency


• Build resilient systems: error handling, retries, circuit breakers, graceful degradation


• Plan cross-platform distribution: Windows, macOS, Linux binaries


• Design for extensibility: plugin systems, modular architecture, clean interfaces


Technical Leadership & Mentorship


• Mentor Rust developer and Python developers learning Rust


• Conduct code reviews with focus on Rust best practices and performance


• Lead architectural design reviews and technical discussions


• Establish Rust knowledge-sharing: workshops, documentation, pair programming


• Build Rust culture within the organization


• Represent Rust expertise in engineering leadership discussions


Infrastructure & DevOps


• Design Rust CI/CD pipelines: cross-compilation, automated testing, release automation


• Establish security practices: cargo-audit, dependency scanning, SBOM generation


• Create performance monitoring and alerting for Rust services


• Design observability strategy: OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, metrics


• Plan deployment strategies for Rust binaries and services


• Set up fuzzing and security testing: cargo-fuzz, afl.rs

**Required technical and professional expertise**

Rust Expertise (5+ years)


• Several years of production Rust experience (or Few years Rust with equivalent of few years in C, C++, Go, etc.) with deep systems programming expertise


• Master-level understanding of Rust: ownership, lifetimes, type system, trait design


• Expert-level Tokio async programming: runtime tuning, performance optimization, complex patterns


• Extensive experience with Rust web frameworks: Axum, Actix-web, hyper, tower


• Deep knowledge of Rust ecosystem: cargo, crates.io, workspace management, feature flags


Systems Design & Performance


• Proven track record of achieving 10x+ performance improvements compared to interpreted languages (e.g. Python).


• Expert-level performance engineering: profiling, optimization, bottleneck analysis


• Knowledge of zero-copy techniques and memory-efficient data structures


• Experience with concurrent programming: lock-free algorithms, atomics, memory ordering


• Understanding of operating system internals and kernel interfaces


Protocol & Network Engineering


• Deep experience implementing network protocols: JSON-RPC, gRPC, HTTP/2, WebSocket


• Expert-level understanding of TCP/IP, networking, and transport protocols


• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency network services


• Knowledge of serialization optimization: serde, zero-copy deserialization, custom formats


• Understanding of streaming and event-driven architectures


Cross-Platform Systems Programming


• Extensive experience with cross-platform development: Windows, macOS, Linux


• Deep knowledge of platform-specific APIs: Windows API, POSIX, system calls


• Experience with subprocess management: stdin/stdout/stderr, signal handling, process lifecycle


• Understanding of platform differences: file systems, networking, threading, memory management


• Experience with cross-compilation and release engineering


Technical Leadership


• Proven track record of leading technical initiatives from design to production


• Experience establishing technical standards and best practices


• Strong architectural thinking and system design capabilities


• Ability to mentor engineers and grow technical capabilities


• Excellent communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences


• Experience collaborating with CTO/VP Eng on technology strategy

**Preferred technical and professional experience**

Advanced Rust Skills


• Experience with unsafe Rust: FFI, low-level optimizations, memory manipulation


• Knowledge of Rust compiler internals: MIR, LLVM, optimization passes


• Experience with procedural macros and advanced metaprogramming


• Understanding of Rust async runtime internals: Tokio, async-std, futures


• Contributions to Rust compiler, standard library, or major ecosystem crates


Performance Optimization


• Experience with SIMD programming in Rust


• Knowledge of cache-friendly data structures and algorithms


• Understanding of CPU performance counters and hardware events


• Experience with profile-guided optimization (PGO) and link-time optimization (LTO)


• Knowledge of memory allocation strategies and custom allocators


Distributed Systems


• Expert-level experience with gRPC and tonic in production


• Knowledge of service mesh architectures: Istio, Linkerd, Envoy


• Understanding of distributed tracing: OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin


• Experience with consensus algorithms and distributed coordination


Security & Reliability


• Experience with Rust security audits and vulnerability management


• Knowledge of constant-time cryptography and side-channel protection


• Experience with fuzzing: cargo-fuzz, afl.rs, property-based testing


• Understanding of supply chain security and SBOM generation


• Knowledge of formal verification techniques for Rust


Open Source & Thought Leadership


• Significant contributions to Rust open-source MCP / A2A ecosystem


• Published crates on crates.io with substantial adoption


• Technical writing: blog posts, RFCs, documentation, whitepapers


• Recognition in Rust community

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics.

IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

Required Skill Profession

Other General