Software Engineer Rust in London

My client is looking for an experienced Software Engineer with strong Rust expertise to join a growing UK technology business delivering secure software and communications solutions into the national defence sector. This is an opportunity to work across live programmes, next-generation product development, and cutting-edge proof-of-concept work, using modern engineering to solve complex real-world challenges. It would suit someone who wants to build secure, high-performance, memory-safe software in an environment where technical quality, innovation, and real-world impact genuinely matter.

Benefits

• £70,000 - £90,000 basic salary
• Bonus
• Hybrid working and flexibility (2 days WHF)
• Pension
• Private healthcare
• Electric car scheme
• Training and development opportunities
• Friendly, knowledgeable, peer-sharing culture
• Career progression

The role and responsibilities

You will join a team building secure, high-performance software for complex and mission-critical environments. The successful candidate will design, develop, and maintain software components written primarily in Rust, while also contributing to wider engineering decisions, technical direction, and best practice. Responsibilities will include:

• Designing, developing, testing, and maintaining production-quality software in Rust
• Building secure, scalable, and memory-safe software components for operationally critical systems
• Contributing to system architecture and selecting appropriate Rust-based frameworks and design patterns
• Acting as a technical point of contact for Rust-related engineering decisions within the team
• Working with asynchronous Rust and networked services in high-performance environments
• Producing clean, maintainable, well-tested code with a strong focus on reliability and security
• Participating in code reviews and helping drive engineering quality across the wider software team
• Mentoring junior and mid-level engineers, promoting knowledge sharing and continuous improvement
• Working closely with architects, product owners, DevSecOps, cloud, and security engineering teams
• Producing technical documentation including design specifications, API documentation, and operational runbooks
• Participating in Agile ceremonies including sprint planning, stand-ups, retrospectives, and backlog refinement
• Communicating technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders where required

Key skills

• Strong commercial experience as a Software Engineer, Rust Engineer, or Backend / Systems Software Engineer
• Strong commercial experience developing production software in Rust
• Strong understanding of Rust ownership, borrowing, lifetimes, and concurrency primitives
• Experience with asynchronous Rust such as Tokio or async-std
• Proficiency with Rust tooling including Cargo, Clippy, Rustfmt, and the wider crate ecosystem
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and systems design
• Experience with version control, Git, CI/CD pipelines, and automated testing
• Strong communication and collaboration skills
• British citizenship and ability to obtain MOD SC clearance

Desired skills

• Existing SC clearance
• Experience working in defence, secure technology, or other highly regulated environments
• Knowledge of cloud platforms such as AWS or Azure
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code, for example Terraform
• Familiarity with containerisation such as Docker and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes
• Understanding of zero-trust architectures, mTLS, and PKI
• Experience with cross-language FFI such as Rust / C / C++
• Exposure to embedded, low-level, or systems-level Rust development
• Experience building secure networked services or communications-focused platforms

Please note: existing SC clearance is advantageous but not essential. Candidates must be British citizens and eligible to undergo MOD SC clearance.