Rust Jobs for Rustaceans

About Helsing
Helsing is a defence AI company. Our mission is to protect our democracies. We aim to achieve technological leadership, so that open societies can continue to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. 

As democracies, we believe we have a special responsibility to be thoughtful about the development and deployment of powerful technologies like AI. We take this responsibility seriously. 

We are an ambitious and committed team of engineers, AI specialists and customer-facing programme managers. We are looking for mission-driven people to join our European teams – and apply their skills to solve the most complex and impactful problems. We embrace an open and transparent culture that welcomes healthy debates on the use of technology in defence, its benefits, and its ethical implications. 

About the Role
You will work on Altra, Helsing's drone software platform, primarily written in Rust. You will design and build systems-level software that powers autonomous capabilities in challenging operational environments. You don't need to be a drone expert — but you should be a strong systems programmer who thrives in low-latency, high-reliability environments and is excited to apply those skills to a mission-critical product. 

Key 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

Requirements:

• Have 5+ years of experience in systems-level software engineering 
• Have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field 
• Are proficient in Rust, or have strong experience in C++ or another systems-level compiled language with a willingness to work in Rust daily 
• Have experience building distributed systems, particularly in unreliable or constrained network environments 
• Have worked with real-time or low-latency systems where performance and reliability are critical 
• Have experience with at least one or two areas relevant to our stack: video streaming, pub/sub messaging, sensor data processing, embedded systems, protocol design, or robotics 
• Have designed or built systems that interface with AI/ML pipelines — streaming data to models, handling inference outputs, managing pipeline orchestration 
• Are familiar with Python, particularly for interfacing with ML/AI components 
• Are a U.S. citizen eligible to obtain a security clearance

Nice to have:

• Direct experience with Rust in production systems 
• Background in robotics, autonomous vehicles, or drone systems 
• Experience with sensor fusion or multi-sensor data processing 
• Familiarity with swarming, multi-agent systems, or decentralized coordination algorithms 
• Experience with constrained or embedded platforms 
• Familiarity with Nix or NixOS for reproducible builds and development environments 
• Experience with SITL/HITL (Software/Hardware-In-The-Loop) simulation and testing frameworks for autonomous systems 
• Experience with RF communications, telemetry, or datalink systems 
• Background in defense or national security

Join Helsing and work with world-leading experts in their fields 

• Helsing’s work is important. You’ll be directly contributing to the protection of democratic countries while balancing both ethical and geopolitical concerns. 
• The work is unique. We operate in a domain that has highly unusual technical requirements and constraints, and where robustness, safety, and ethical considerations are vital. You will face unique Engineering and AI challenges that make a meaningful impact in the world. 
• Our work frequently takes us right up to the state of the art in technical innovation, be it reinforcement learning, distributed systems, generative AI, or deployment infrastructure. The defence industry is entering the most exciting phase of the technological development curve. Advances in our field of world are not incremental: Helsing is part of, and often leading, historic leaps forward. 
• In our domain, success is a matter of order-of-magnitude improvements and novel capabilities. This means we take bets, aim high, and focus on big opportunities. Despite being a relatively young company, Helsing has already been selected for multiple significant government contracts.  
• We actively encourage healthy, proactive, and diverse debate internally about what we do and how we choose to do it. Teams and individual engineers are trusted (and encouraged) to practise responsible autonomy and critical thinking, and to focus on outcomes, not conformity. At Helsing you will have a say in how we (and you!) work, the opportunity to engage on what does and doesn’t work, and to take ownership of aspects of our culture that you care deeply about.

What we offer

• A focus on outcomes, not time-tracking
• Competitive compensation and stock options
• Relocation support
• Social and education allowances
• Regular company events and all-hands to bring together employees as one team across Europe
• A hands-on onboarding program (affectionately labelled “Infraduction”), in which you will be building tooling and applications to be used across the company. This is your opportunity to learn our tech stack, explore the company, and learn how we get things done - all whilst working with other engineering teams from day one

Helsing is an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability or gender identity. Please do not submit personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning your health, or data concerning your sexual orientation.