Senior Rust Developer at Toptal
Join our team as a Senior Rust Developer and help drive innovation in computational biology. Your mission will be to build scalable, open-source workflow execution engines that enable scientists to deploy and manage large-scale computations with ease.
General Details
- Location: Remote. Candidates from GMT-8 to GMT+5 time zones are welcome. We are unable to consider applicants from China, Australia, or similar time zones.
- Required Overlap: 3 - 4 hours with Chicago/Texas (US Central Time)
- Duration: 6 months (with possibility of extension)
About the Project
Sprocket is an open-source workflow execution engine built in Rust. It allows scientists—who may not have deep expertise in scaling and deploying large computations—to describe workflows simply using the Workflow Description Language.
What We're Looking For
- Required Skills:
- Senior-level Rust development experience and a proven history of delivering production-ready code
- Background in contributing to or leading open-source initiatives
- Knowledge of workflow engines, scientific computing, or large-scale computational systems
- Proficiency with Rust crates for lexing, parsing, validating, linting, formatting, testing, and running domain-specific languages
- Strong ability in API design and developing specifications
- Experience using GitHub for project planning and teamwork
- Bonus Skills (not required):
- Familiarity with OpenAPI (Swagger) for specification development
- Knowledge of Workflow Description Language (WDL) and Task Execution Schema (TES)
- Experience with Kubernetes or cloud/HPC infrastructure
- Previous engagement with standards organizations such as GA4GH
- Experience with Rust crates like utoipa for OpenAPI/Swagger documentation
Key Responsibilities
- Help develop and improve the Sprocket workflow execution engine and related Rust crates (e.g., wdl, sprocket, crankshaft)
- Enhance the Workflow Description Language (WDL) specification by proposing, drafting, and guiding changes through the approval process
- Collaborate on advancing the Task Execution Schema (TES), working with standards bodies and the open-source community
- Create and maintain reference implementations with thorough API documentation (OpenAPI/Swagger)
- Provide regular updates and work closely with the computational biology team
Why Join Us
- Full-time, long-term engagement
- Work on meaningful open-source technology used by scientists globally
- Help shape the future of open standards in scientific workflow execution