Senior Rust Developer

Location: Remote (any location) - able to work 9am - 6pm EST
Type: Long-term contract
Start Date: August 2025 to August 2026

Nexus Studios is a global creative studio working with award-winning directors across animation, artful live-action and immersive to redefine the boundaries of entertainment. Our work has received accolades from BAFTA, Emmy, Grammy, Academy Awards to name a few. We work with the world’s leading cultural brands and have a deep rooted history in innovation, XR and crafted storytelling.

We are seeking a Senior Rust Developer to architect and build a high-performance real-time streaming platform for a new XR sports and entertainment engagement product. This role focuses on developing the core backend infrastructure that powers live, fan-facing experiences with demanding real-time performance requirements. You'll be responsible for building scalable streaming services, data synchronization systems, and APIs that support our frontend XR applications built with Kotlin.

This is a live, fan-facing product—not content delivery. The technical infrastructure must support real-time streaming performance, time-critical data synchronization across multiple clients, and seamless integration with external data APIs. You'll work closely with a technical lead and technology director to deliver a robust, performant backend that evolves from MVP through launch and live operations.

What You'll Do:

• Design and implement the core Rust-based streaming architecture for high-performance async services.
• Build real-time data streaming pipelines with gRPC and HTTP/2.0 for low-latency fan engagement features on XR devices.
• Develop comprehensive serialization/deserialization systems for efficient data exchange with XR clients.
• Implement time synchronization protocols to ensure consistent live experiences across distributed clients.
• Create scalable microservices architecture that can handle peak event traffic loads.
• Integrate with external data APIs and partner systems, managing real-time data ingestion and processing.
• Collaborate with frontend XR teams to define efficient data and streaming contracts.
• Support the development team with tooling, documentation, and code review processes.

What You Will Bring:

• 8+ years of systems engineering experience, including 2+ years in Senior or Lead positions with distributed systems.
• Expert-level Rust development experience with deep understanding of async/await, ownership models, and zero-copy performance optimization.
• Proven experience with Axum, Tokio, Warp, or similar Rust web frameworks for high-throughput async services.
• Strong background in gRPC service development, Protocol Buffers, and streaming RPC patterns.
• Experience building high-performance data streaming systems with backpressure handling and flow control.
• Track record of designing and implementing scalable microservices architectures that handle variable load patterns.
• Familiarity with observability tools and operational monitoring in Rust applications.
• Are excited by the challenge of building for live, high-emotion moments and performance under pressure.
  

Preferred Experience:

• AWS experience with ECS/Fargate, Lambda, and core networking services
• Understanding of XR/VR data requirements and low-latency streaming constraints.
• Background in live event streaming systems or time-critical data processing.
• Experience with Rust gRPC implementations (tonic, grpcio) and protobuf code generation.
• Collaborative experience with external platform teams or co-development environments.
• A passion for live storytelling, and what immersive platforms can unlock for fandom.
  

This is a Nexus-led role focused on backend systems architecture, working within a highly collaborative, partner-facing development environment. You'll help define not just what we build, but how we architect it—shaping our streaming infrastructure, data synchronization strategies, and the evolution of a platform with global reach.
If you're excited about building high-performance Rust systems for the next generation of immersive media experiences, we'd love to talk.
Nexus Studios is proud to work with extraordinary talent as an equal opportunity employer. We embrace individuals of all backgrounds regardless of gender, race, age, abilities or sexual preferences. Our recruitment process is merit-based, ensuring fair treatment to every applicant.