Contract Software Engineer (Rust / .NET)
At-a-Glance
- Contract engineering role building large-scale, event-driven distributed systems
- Rust or modern .NET (Core 8 and above)... strong candidates in either are wanted
- AWS, Kubernetes, microservices, PostgreSQL and Kafka, with mature CI/CD throughout
- Belfast based with hybrid working
- Multiple contractors being brought on, so this is a team build rather than a single seat
About the Company
My client is a large international organisation with a substantial and growing engineering presence in Belfast, building platforms that handle serious volumes of data for enterprise customers worldwide. The engineering environment is genuinely modern... no legacy estate to prop up, and technology decisions made on merit rather than inherited.
The Role
This is hands-on delivery work inside established engineering teams, contributing to services that need to be correct and performant at scale. You will be writing production code from early on, working alongside permanent engineers rather than off to one side on a discrete project. The stack is deliberately current, and the teams care about how things are built as much as whether they ship. It suits an experienced contractor who wants to work on distributed systems properly and can get productive quickly without heavy hand-holding.
Key Responsibilities
- Build and maintain backend services in Rust or modern .NET
- Design and implement event-driven components using Kafka
- Deploy and operate microservices on AWS using Kubernetes
- Model and query data in PostgreSQL with performance in mind
- Work within established CI/CD pipelines, contributing to automated testing and release quality
- Collaborate with permanent engineering teams on architecture and implementation decisions
- Contribute front-end work in React where the role calls for full-stack delivery
- Deliver production-ready code at pace without compromising standards
What You'll Need
Essential:
- Commercial experience in either Rust or modern .NET (Core 8 and above)
- Proven experience building and running microservices in a distributed environment
- Hands-on AWS experience, including containerised deployment with Kubernetes
- Solid PostgreSQL or comparable relational database experience
- Comfortable working within mature CI/CD and automated testing practices
- Right to work in the UK and able to work on a hybrid basis from Belfast
Desirable / Nice to Have:
- Full-stack capability with React
- Experience with Kafka or other event-driven architectures
- Previous contract experience, with a track record of getting productive quickly
Why Apply?
- Competitive day rate, benchmarked to the specialism
- Hybrid working from Belfast
- Genuinely modern stack, with no legacy estate to maintain
- Rare opportunity to work with Rust in production in this market
- Real engineering scale, on systems where performance and correctness actually matter
- Several contractors being engaged, so you join a build rather than working in isolation
- Straightforward, fast-moving process with a client who knows what they want
Next Steps
Send your CV to Brendan McCrory at , or connect on LinkedIn for an informal chat about the detail and the rate on offer.