Rust Software Engineer

Location: Glasgow, hybrid (50/50 split between home and office)

Salary: Up to £65,000 DOE

KO2's client develops advanced cheminformatics software that helps scientists understand and work better with chemical data. They're looking for an experienced Rust Software Engineer to join their small, growing team in Glasgow. You'll build robust, high-performance Rust components and turn complex scientific algorithms into safe, efficient, well-tested code. You'll also help integrate that work with the company's established C++ codebase.

The company is international and close-knit. The Glasgow team works closely with colleagues in small offices in Germany and France, so you'll be part of a collaborative, multicultural engineering group.

You'll work closely with chemistry subject-matter experts and implement their algorithms using idiomatic Rust and sound design principles. You'll be one of the main code reviewers, protect the quality and consistency of the architecture, and mentor junior developers as they continue to grow.

Key responsibilities

Design, build and maintain high-performance Rust libraries and services for cheminformatics applications

Implement new cheminformatics algorithms specified by the SMEs

Review algorithm specifications for feasibility and clarity before implementation

Integrate Rust components with the existing C++ codebase through safe, well-designed FFI boundaries

Act as a primary code reviewer, protecting the team's architectural consistency and code quality

Own the test strategy for your work, covering unit and integration tests, property-based tests, edge cases and regression protection

Maintain Cargo workspaces, build tooling and related Linux infrastructure

Mentor junior developers on idiomatic Rust, ownership and borrowing, clean code and architecture

Work with colleagues in Glasgow, Germany and France

Document your implementations clearly, including public API docs with rustdocEssential skills and experience

Significant commercial Rust experience, ideally in performance-sensitive or systems-level work

A deep understanding of Rust's ownership model, lifetimes and type system, and how to design clean APIs around them

An architectural mindset. You use traits, generics and modular crate design to build maintainable, extensible systems

Strong code review skills. You give thorough, constructive feedback and can spot subtle logic errors, unnecessary unsafe and design drift

A solid understanding of concurrency in Rust, including Send and Sync, synchronisation primitives, and data-parallel libraries such as Rayon

Experience writing and reviewing unsafe code responsibly, with clear safety invariants

Familiarity with the Rust toolchain and quality tools: Cargo, Clippy, rustfmt, Miri and sanitisers

Experience developing on Linux

Desirable skills

Commercial C++ experience, and confidence working across a mixed Rust/C++ codebase

Rust-C++ interoperability using tools such as cxx or bindgen

Python bindings with PyO3 and maturin, plus Python testing with pytest

Experience of AI-assisted development, such as using Claude Code and directing coding agents on architectural decisions

Implementing algorithms from specifications, and reasoning about their efficiency and complexity

Async Rust (e.g. Tokio) and network programming

Benchmarking and profiling with tools such as Criterion and perf

Docker and containerised build environments

Maintaining CI/CD pipelinesWhat's on offer

A competitive salary, depending on experience

Flexible hybrid working, split 50/50 between home and the Glasgow office

A small, growing Glasgow team that you can help shape

Working with international colleagues in Germany and France

Challenging, meaningful work on scientific software

A senior role with real influence over architecture and code qualityHow to apply

Send your up-to-date CV to KO2 Embedded Recruitment Solutions, or contact Laurence Powell today for more details