Careers at the Rust Foundation

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Life at the Rust Foundation

Founded in 2021, the Rust Foundation is a virtual, international organization with an all-remote workforce. We have a small team of full-time staff in the USA and Europe, and ambitions to grow over the next few years.

Founding members of the team have many years of experience at remote working. We’re proud of being able to facilitate close collaboration without being in the same office, or even in the same time zone. We communicate primarily via Google Meet, Slack and email, and are evolving a culture of daily stand-ups and regular check-ins on important projects.

We support our team in working from home effectively, providing a work laptop, other essential kit, and advice on how to optimize your setup. If you prefer to take a co-working space, we’ll cover the costs. Flexible working patterns are fully supported, and we trust you to organize your own hours and your workload in the way that works best for you.

For many of our roles, you won't need to know Rust or any other programming language to work here – what you do need is an interest in helping a community of people all over the world work together to achieve a common goal. Experience in software or open source projects is a bonus but not something we’re exclusively looking for.

Our Recruitment Process

Read through our website to learn more about the Rust Foundation and the work we do. If you feel you’re a good fit, we encourage you to apply!

We use Applied as our recruitment platform because we fully believe in their mission of unbiased hiring. Instead of a resume and cover letter, we’ll ask you to show us your ability to do the job by answering a small number of skills-focused questions. You’ll upload your resume as part of your application, but nobody will see it (or your name, or anything else about you) until your answers have been reviewed.

We generally don’t deal with professional recruitment agencies or accept unsolicited resumes – all applications will need to be submitted via our Applied page for a specific vacancy.

After the closing date for the listing you are interested in, you can expect to hear back from us within no more than 10 working days. If we decide we’re not going to invite you to an interview, we’ll try to give you any useful feedback that we can about why not.

At the interview (which will usually be a video call), you will meet members of the team, learn more about the context and requirements of the role, and help us to clarify our understanding of your suitability for it. It’s a conversation – you’re interviewing the Foundation as much as the Foundation is interviewing you. And again, if we decide not to offer you the role, we will let you know promptly, and we will give you useful feedback about why not.

Pay and Rewards

We want to be as transparent as possible about our compensation principles and explain why many of our open roles won’t have a salary range attached.

We aim to recruit from the largest possible pool of candidates and benefit from their diversity of backgrounds and experiences, so we hire globally, not limited to a single location. Competitive rates vary enormously across different regions and countries.

Rust Foundation is a nonprofit organization. This means that we need to use our resources prudently. We can’t pay everyone the highest wage – that would mean we wouldn’t be able to hire as many people, impacting our ability to deliver the best results for the Rust community. We also may not be able to offer wages that are directly comparable to corporate market leaders, or to compete with offers elsewhere. But what we will always do is ensure our staff are compensated at or above the average in their local market.

We do not base remuneration decisions on an applicant’s previous pay and we will not ask for that information during the recruitment process. We use salary expectations, not salary history, when we make an offer.

We’re also committed to ensuring that benefits packages are comparable across jurisdictions. This may not mean identical. Different jurisdictions have different standards for benefit provision and different legal minimums. We will always meet those, and where one country's legal minimum exceeds others, we'll do our best to offer that level to staff in all countries. However, benefits packages need to be considered in the round.

In most countries we are using Remote as our employment partner. You can use their Country Explorer to see the benefits that are available in your location.

Secondments

From time to time the Rust Foundation will enter into formal or informal ‘secondment’ arrangements by partnering with companies and their employee(s) to create a role within the Foundation to address a particular Rust-related challenge. An appointee from that company will work for a fixed duration, part-time or full-time, on a Foundation-directed project, bringing their abilities and experience to support our work.

These projects enable the appointee to enhance or develop their own skills and understanding of particular areas of work, and provide the opportunity to work with new people. Through taking on a new professional challenge, they can gain valuable and transferable expertise.

These roles are fully supported by the parent company of the seconded individual, and so are not subject to our normal recruitment process.

Equal opportunities statement

Rust Foundation is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and is determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on grounds of race, colour, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, age, trade union membership and activity, or any other protected characteristic; or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.