Principal Software Engineering - Rust Systems Engineer

Progress•Burlington, MA

8d•$170,000 - $189,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Progress is seeking a Rust Systems Engineer to join the OpenEdge Core Engineering team. This role is for an expert systems programmer who will introduce Rust into a 30-year-old, mission-critical production database engine. The candidate will have technical leadership skills to guide an engineering organization through this transition. Progress Software, headquartered in Burlington, MA, has a 30+ year history with its core product, OpenEdge, a multi-platform RDBMS engine used in critical business applications globally. The company is strategically introducing Rust to enhance memory safety, enable new platforms (macOS, ARM/Graviton, NUMA), and build new subsystems (Apache Iceberg, Avro, Kafka CDC) while maintaining stability. The engineer will be embedded in the OpenEdge Core Engineering team, responsible for the database engine's internals, server operations, IPC, utilities, and enterprise features. The role involves serving as the Rust technical lead across multiple sub-teams and founding/leading a Rust Guild to train existing C/C++ engineers in Rust.

Requirements

10+ years of Software Engineering Experience
5+ years of production Rust in systems-level software (database engines, OS components, embedded systems, network infrastructure, or similar)
Strong C/C++ background with the ability to read, understand, and interface with large C codebases daily
FFI expertise with production experience in Rust ↔ C interop (extern "C", cbindgen/bindgen, unsafe boundary design, and memory-ownership protocols across language boundaries)
Experience shipping shared libraries (.so/.dll Rust libraries consumed by C/C++ callers in production environments)
Build system integration experience (integrating Cargo with non-Cargo build systems like Make, CMake, Bazel, or custom frameworks)
Multi-platform development experience (Linux x86_64 and Windows 64-bit at minimum)
Experience implementing software using OS fundamentals: file-system and storage management, memory management, virtual memory, process synchronization, and multithreading
Strong problem analysis and solving skills; ability to work independently and meet tight deadlines
Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English
Mentorship / tech-lead experience
A degree in Computer Science or equivalent foundational experience covering data structures, algorithms, operating systems, and database fundamentals

Nice To Haves

Database internals (shared memory, buffer pools, WAL, concurrency control, storage engines)
gRPC / tonic (production experience building async gRPC services in Rust with tower middleware, prost code generation, and tonic-web)
Apache Arrow / Parquet / Iceberg / Avro ecosystem experience
NUMA-aware programming (hwloc, mbind(), set_mempolicy(), per-node allocation strategies)
Memory allocator design (arena/region allocators, custom allocator traits in Rust, jemalloc/mimalloc integration)
io_uring / async I/O (experience with modern Linux I/O or Rust tokio runtime for systems work)
macOS and ARM/Graviton platform experience
Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude) for code translation and pair programming workflows

Responsibilities

Integrate Rust (Cargo-based workflows) into the existing CMK (custom Make) build system to compile, link, and ship Rust shared libraries alongside C subsystems on Linux x86_64 and Windows 64-bit.
Define and standardize Rust ↔ C FFI architecture, including extern "C" boundary design, auto-generated C headers (via cbindgen), error-handling conventions, and memory ownership/lifetime rules.
Establish Rust as a first-class, supportable language within the core database engine.
Design and deliver production-grade Rust shared libraries to replace legacy C implementations, including a Rust-based zstd-backed compression library and a memory-safe, multi-threaded Rust JSON parser.
Develop an Avro encode/decode layer supporting OpenEdge ↔ Apache Avro type mappings for Apache Iceberg integration.
Own benchmarking, validation, and parity testing to ensure Rust replacements meet or exceed legacy performance and stability.
Architect and lead a Rust-based platform systems layer replacing System V IPC with modern, cross-platform primitives (mmap, POSIX shared memory, futex-style synchronization).
Enable macOS developer builds and ARM / Graviton production deployments.
Design NUMA-aware memory allocation strategies for multi-socket, high-throughput production servers using hwloc.
Guide Tier-3 Rust crates covering cloud file I/O, Iceberg table operations, and engine integration bridges.
Architect an async gRPC server using tonic, tower, and tokio to modernize the PASOE data path and replace Tomcat/HTTP-based flows.
Design middleware layers for authentication (JWT), observability, and performance isolation with a focus on multi-core throughput improvements.
Act as the Rust code owner across the organization, reviewing all Rust PRs and enforcing idiomatic Rust, safe unsafe usage, and consistent FFI patterns.
Mentor senior C/C++ engineers transitioning into Rust through pair programming, structured code reviews, and hands-on module translation exercises.
Lead the Rust Guild, hosting regular technical sessions covering FFI design patterns, async Rust, PR walkthroughs, and architectural deep dives.
Communicate architectural decisions, trade-offs, and migration strategy clearly to senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.
Partner with management on Rust adoption standards, long-term platform strategy, and hiring plans for senior Rust capability expansion.