Principal Python Engineer — ML Infrastructure
Job Description
About The Role
What if your Python expertise could directly shape the infrastructure that powers the most advanced AI systems in the world? We're looking for a Principal Python Engineer to design and build the data pipelines, annotation tooling, and evaluation systems that leading AI labs depend on — real production work with real impact at scale.
This is a fully remote, flexible contract role for a seasoned engineer who thrives in high-performance, distributed environments and wants to work on problems that matter.
- Organization: Alignerr
- Type: Hourly Contract
- Location: Remote
- Commitment: 20–40 hours/week
- Design, build, and optimize high-performance Python systems that power AI data pipelines and evaluation workflows
- Develop full-stack tooling and backend services for large-scale data annotation, validation, and quality control
- Improve reliability, performance, and safety across production Python codebases
- Identify bottlenecks and edge cases in data and system behavior — then implement scalable, elegant fixes
- Collaborate with data, research, and engineering teams to support model training and evaluation workflows
- Drive architectural and system design decisions through synchronous technical reviews
- Native or fluent English speaker with strong written and verbal communication skills
- Senior full-stack developer with a strong systems programming background
- 5+ years of professional experience writing production Python for large-scale infrastructure or platform engineering
- Deep expertise in designing distributed computing systems and managing concurrency with advanced asynchronous patterns
- Intimately familiar with Python internals — GIL limitations, memory profiling, and performance optimization for compute-heavy workloads
- Able to drive technical strategy and architectural decisions clearly and confidently
- Available to commit 20–40 hours per week
- Prior experience with data annotation, data quality, or model evaluation systems
- Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, model training pipelines, or benchmarking infrastructure
- Experience with distributed systems architecture or internal developer tooling
- Work directly with leading AI research labs on production systems that shape next-generation models
- Fully remote and flexible — structure your work around your life, not the other way around
- Freelance autonomy with the substance of high-impact, technically demanding work
- Collaborate with top engineers and researchers on problems at the frontier of AI infrastructure
- Potential for ongoing engagement and expanded scope as projects grow
??? people applied to this job
The two or three lines under your name say who you are before anyone reads the rest. Type your job and a few facts, and our summary writer gives you five to pick from. Write a summary →
View Similar Jobs
Similar jobs which you may be interested in. Typically using your existing skillset.
$100,000 - $150,000/Mo
2 years ago
Site Reliability Engineer
Team Remotely Inc.San Diego, USA
Site Reliability
Engineer
Infrastructure Maintenance
$100,000 - $150,000/Mo
2 years ago
$60,000 - $90,000/Mo
2 years ago
Junior Site Reliability Engineer
Patterned Learning Career.San Diego, USA
Site Reliability
Engineering
Junior
$60,000 - $90,000/Mo
2 years ago
Site Reliability Engineer
Phoenix Recruitment.San Diego, USA
Site Reliability Engineer
DevOps
System Administrator
$95,000 - $160,000/Mo
2 years ago
$110,000 - $150,000/Mo
2 years ago
Site Reliability Engineer
Stellar Consulting Solutions, LLC.San Diego, USA
Site Reliability
Engineer
IT Operations
$90,000 - $150,000/Mo
2 years ago
$90,000 - $140,000/Mo
2 years ago
DevOps Engineer
Team Remotely Inc.San Diego, USA
1. Cloud Infrastructure 2. Continuous Integration 3. Automation Tools
$90,000 - $150,000/Mo
2 years ago
$90,000 - $140,000/Mo
2 years ago