Rust engineer

MetalBear is seeking an experienced Rust engineer to advance their flagship product, mirrord, a developer tool for cloud engineers. This role involves contributing to high-performance Rust code for real-time mirroring between local development and remote Kubernetes environments, enhancing developer experience, collaborating with a world-class engineering team on architecture and features, and engaging with the open-source community. It's an opportunity to work on deep systems engineering challenges within a fast-growing, revenue-generating open-source product.

Must Have

• 5+ years of professional software development experience
• 2+ years writing production-grade Rust
• Strong systems-level thinking and an ability to debug complex, distributed environments
• Comfort working async in a remote-first startup environment with high autonomy
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Docker, containers, Kubernetes) beyond the basics

Good to Have

• Experience building developer tools for or extending Kubernetes
• Experience building Kubernetes operators or other components that interact with the Kubernetes API
• Familiarity with backend infrastructure tooling like datastores, message brokers, GitOps tools, etc.
• Open-source experience — contributing to or maintaining developer-facing OSS projects

Perks & Benefits

• Work on hard, meaningful problems at the intersection of local development and cloud infrastructure
• Be part of a small, high-caliber team where your work directly impacts thousands of developers and some of the world’s biggest companies
• Remote-first and async-friendly — high trust, low meetings, and flexibility to do your best work
• Competitive salary, meaningful stock options, and a culture that values focus and autonomy
• Build tools developers love — OSS-first, fast-growing, and already revenue-generating

Description

The next generation of developer tools for cloud engineers. Our flagship product, mirrord, lets developers run local processes as if they were running directly inside their cloud environment — without the friction of deployment or risk of breaking shared environments.

mirrord’s open-source core is already trusted by thousands of developers worldwide, and our paid product is generating meaningful revenue — including from Fortune 500 companies. This is a rare chance to work on deep systems engineering challenges while building an open-source product that developers love.

🚀 What You’ll Do

• Contribute to high-performance Rust code that powers real-time mirroring between local development and remote Kubernetes environments.
• Improve the developer experience — making cloud development as seamless and fast as working locally.
• Collaborate closely with our small, world-class engineering team on architecture, performance optimization, and new feature design.
• Engage with our open-source community — gather feedback, debug issues, and contribute to a product developers love.

Requirements

🔧 What We’re Looking For

• 5+ years of professional software development experience.
• 2+ years writing production-grade Rust.
• Strong systems-level thinking and an ability to debug complex, distributed environments.
• Comfort working async in a remote-first startup environment with high autonomy.
• Familiarity with cloud-native environments (Docker, containers, Kubernetes) beyond the basics.

🌟 Nice to Have

• Experience building developer tools for or extending Kubernetes.
• Experience building Kubernetes operators or other components that interact with the Kubernetes API.
• Familiarity with backend infrastructure tooling like datastores, message brokers, GitOps tools, etc.
• Open-source experience — contributing to or maintaining developer-facing OSS projects.

📈 Why Join MetalBear

• Work on hard, meaningful problems at the intersection of local development and cloud infrastructure.
• Be part of a small, high-caliber team where your work directly impacts thousands of developers and some of the world’s biggest companies.
• Remote-first and async-friendly — high trust, low meetings, and flexibility to do your best work.
• Competitive salary, meaningful stock options, and a culture that values focus and autonomy.
• Build tools developers love — OSS-first, fast-growing, and already revenue-generating.