I’m writing to express my strong interest in backend and systems engineering roles, with a particular passion for working with Rust.
Background
I am a software engineer with 8 years of professional experience. My journey started in Belgrade, where I attended a high school for gifted mathematicians before studying Electrical Engineering and Electronics at the University of Belgrade. I began my career as a silicon designer for 2 years, then transitioned to software engineering in 2017.
Big part of my software career has been focused on frontend development (Angular, React, Next.js, Svelte, Remix), along with backend experience in Node.js and NestJS. For the last 2 years, I worked at Gel as a TypeScript tooling and AI engineer, where I built AI solutions with both TypeScript and Python.
Despite this, I’ve always felt drawn back to low-level and systems work—where I can tackle more complex problems and focus on performance. Two months ago, I decided to fully commit to this direction.
Recent Focus
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to Rust and backend/system design:
- Read ~35% of Designing Data-Intensive Applications (Kleppmann).
- Completed ~80% of both the Rust Book and Async Rust.
- Studied the first 3 chapters of Rust Atomics and Locks and resources like CPU caches and memory.
- Worked through the Tokio tutorial and read many blog posts.
I Built a Rust Project
I built redis-streams, a Rust library inspired by Redis Streams. While it’s an early version (created in 4 days with the help of AI), it gave me hands-on experience with concurrency, locking, and Tokio.
In retrospect, I realized the design could be improved with a Radix tree for efficiency, so I want to explore existing crates or build my own radix tree crate. I also recently learned about ULID, which may fit this project well.
Current Exploration & Contributions
I merged few PRs to Meilisearch.
I’m also preparing to contribute to:
- SlateDB – currently reading their docs, knowledge from Designing Data-Intensive Applications (SSTables, LSM trees, WALs) helps a lot to understand the project.
- I find very interesting rust RocksDB binding.
- Maybe will also contribute to Tokio or some other projects I discover.
Why Rust & Systems Work
While I’ve built a career in frontend and AI, my long-term aspiration has always been to design performant systems and solve challenging engineering problems. I’m looking for a role where I can apply my experience, continue learning, and grow within a Rust-focused team. I am also open to full-stack work. It is not that I don't like FE or tooling work—I enjoy programming in general and I am grateful for all the knowledge and skills I have picked up until now. I just want to spend time perfecting my skills in a slightly different area of programming.