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Rust Developer: Guide to a Fascinating Career 2023

Cover image for Rust Developer: Guide to a Fascinating Career 2023

How easy is it to become a Rust developer? Moreover, is it an exciting and rewarding career for developers and programmers with skills in this low-level language? There’s undoubtedly increasing demand for Rust developers to work freelance or employed. Likewise, a candidate with Rust expertise can expect a good salary and promotion prospects.

You might imagine that companies want to hire developers with skills in abstract or complex programming languages. While that is often the case, the Rust systems programming language is considered low-level. Therefore, a complete beginner can learn Rust programming and become a well-paid Rust developer.

The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021 of 80,000 developers revealed that Rust is the most popular programming language, a title it has won six times. Meanwhile, Google plans to use Rust to reduce security flaws, and Microsoft uses Rust to reduce Windows’ bugs related to memory. In addition, Facebook joined the Rust Foundation, and other big names include Amazon Web Services, and Mozilla.

To sum up, this guide explains what a Rust developer does and how easy it is to gain the skills to apply for Rust programming jobs. In addition, we have highlighted two excellent training courses for Rust developers. One of them is tailored to complete beginners and is affordable with a monthly payment option. In conclusion, you will know the exact steps necessary to learn Rust programming language and start securing interviews for your new career.

Contents

What Does a Rust Developer Do?

Rust is a computer programming language used by Rust developers to create systems and software, initially developed as an open-source project by Mozilla Research. It is used for system programming for applications or operations linked to macOS, Linux or Window’s, and is suitable for programming web applications.

Rust is super-fast, simpler, and safer than many existing programming languages like C++ and C. It’s a high-performing code when processing a lot of data, which is why it has become popular with many tech companies like Dropbox and Firefox.

Primarily, your job as a Rust developer means writing code and collaborating with a team regarding project specifications and end-user requirements. You will liaise with relevant departments and people like blockchain engineers and management teams. Rust developers integrate third-party programs and software, update, debug and troubleshoot existing software, gather feedback, and recommend improvements.

In addition, senior Rust developers may be responsible for mentoring new developers and creating technical documentation and training materials for the end user.

What Skills Does a Rust Developer Need?

A Rust developer does not need a computer science or IT bachelor’s degree, but if you have one, it can help with job applications that list a degree as a prerequisite. Mostly, companies will select resumes from candidates with experience in low-level backend programming languages. In addition, it helps to have a specific Rust certification and real-world expertise with Rust programming.

Hard Skills Required for Rust Developers

Your Rust training will likely include the following technical skills:

  • Experience with algorithms and data structures
  • Familiarity with debugging tools
  • Working experience with kernel development tools (Like WinDbg)
  • Experienced in secure coding practices
  • Strong testing skills
  • Experience building enterprise solutions for specialist platforms (AI, Blockchain)
  • Ideally, knowledge of C/C++

Rust Developer Prerequisite Soft Skills

Above all, it’s not all about techy skills. The role of a Rust developer also needs a broad range of soft skills:

  • Problem-solving
  • Collaboration at various levels
  • Can work under pressure
  • Excellent communication

What Makes Rust System Programming Different?

C++ has had unresolved issues with optimum memory safety and management. For instance, the “use after free errors” causes a program to continue after being freed. Above all, Rust resolves this issue by eliminating memory violation bugs at the compile time.

There are two modes for writing Rust code:

  • Safe Rust: Puts restrictions on the programmer, which means it is safer
  • Unsafe Rust: Programmers have more autonomy for unlocking options, but it could compromise safety

Rust system programming makes it easier to write concurrent programs as data races are detected at compile time. In addition, it checks if there are incorrect operations on objects. This aspect differentiates Rust from C++, where developers can write buggy code. The danger is that bugs aren’t detected until there’s a hack or after a program goes into production.

To that end, experienced developers may struggle initially with Rust language because they aren’t used to error detection at compile time. Subsequently, the Rust developer may experience a lot of error messages that wouldn’t be visible in compile time with another programming language like C++.

For the beginner, learning from a blank slate is easier because error detection in compile time is part of their training, and they have no other languages to compare. That said, some language knowledge of object-oriented programming helps you to learn the Rust language, which can be tricky for new programmers.

Rust Developer Salary

There are two ways to approach a career as a Rust developer. Either seek an employed role or start a career as a freelance Rust developer. If you are new to developer roles, beginning a career as an employee may be more beneficial. Subsequently, after gaining sufficient experience and building a profile of Rust projects, you can consider working as a highly-paid freelance Rust developer.

As an employee, starting salaries range from £25,000 to £35,000, depending on your skills and qualifications. With sufficient experience and proven success, UK Rust developers can earn from £50,000 to £90,000.

Freelance Rust Developers’ rates

Most freelance contractors charge a day rate for their work. The average is around £600 daily, but these fees could be higher depending on the client and the project.

Rust Systems Programming Training Courses

Framework Training: Rust Training Course

Firstly, the in-depth Framework Rust training course teaches students to develop high-performance applications with Rust. Secondly, the course prerequisite is that students must have programming experience using languages such as C++, JavaScript, Java and similar.

Course Modules

  1. Introduction to Rust: Language fundamentals, obtaining Rust, setting up your development environment and useful online Resources
  2. Getting started with Rust: Variables, data types, functions, comments, the flow of control and expressions
  3. Rust ownership: What is ownership? Memory safety, stack & heap, borrowing and slices
  4. Structuring Data: Structs, related data, instantiating structs, tuple structs and ownership of struct data
  5. Pattern Matching: Enums, defining types, expressions, and match control flow operator
  6. Keeping track of your project: Packages, crates, modules, paths and controlling scope and privacy
  7. Rust Collections: Lists, values, vectors, and keys & hash maps
  8. Error Handling: Backtracking and using the result type
  9. Generics: Types, traits, and lifetimes
  10. Testing: Writing tests, cargo tests and unit tests
  11. OO Programming: Is Rust an object-oriented language? When to use object-oriented patterns in Rust, objects, encapsulation, and trait objects
  12. Functional programming: Iterators, closures and loops or iterators?
  13. Smart Pointers: Using Box and the Drop trait
  14. Concurrency: Threading, join handles, message passing and sync and send

The Framework Rust training is remote, instructor-led, and available for teams and individual learning. It’s a four-day course costing over £2,000 plus VAT, with no options for flexible payment. However, if you prefer subscription-based training, check the Rust programming course below.

Zero to Mastery: Rust Programming: The Complete Developer’s Guide

The Zero to Mastery Rust programming course is comprehensive training suitable for complete beginners. There are no prerequisites, and many Zero to Mastery graduates have secured jobs with Tesla, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, IBM and many more publicly listed big tech companies.

The ZTM training is ideal if you have a tight budget, as you can join the academy for a small monthly or annual membership fee. In addition, there is a risk-free, 30-day money-back guarantee if you are not happy with the training.

You will learn real-time coding rather than purely video or text-based training. That is to say you will soon start building Rust projects of your own.

  • Learn Core programming concepts
  • Build your skills progressively with learning outcomes at each stage
  • 30 practical coding exercises suitable for real-world applications with accompanying video to assist, so you understand how and why the code succeeds in the task

Course Modules

  • Introduction: 4 lectures
  • Rust Fundamentals: 13 lectures
  • Making Decisions with Rust: 7 lectures
  • Repetition: 4 lectures
  • Working With Data: 12 lectures
  • Rust’s Memory Model: 4 lectures
  • Data Collections: 8 lectures
  • Expanding Knowledge: 11 lectures
  • Fallible Functions: 4 lectures
  • Data Collection: HashMap: 3 lectures
  • Easier Data Management: 10 lectures
  • Managing Code: 8 lectures
  • Milestone Project: Billing Application: 9 lectures
  • Shared Functionality: 15 lectures
  • Lifetimes: 4 lectures
  • Improving Program Reliability: 16 lectures
  • Type Conversions: 5 lectures
  • Parallel Execution: 8 lectures
  • Shared Ownership: 8 lectures
  • Standard Library Tour: 10 lectures
  • Other Language Features: 5 lectures
  • Development Experience: 3 lectures
  • Crate Roundup: 11 lectures
  • Resources: 1 lecture
  • Final Project: Clip Stash: 53 lectures
  • Declarative Macros: 14 lectures
  • Where To Go from Here? 6 lectures

Although the Rust programming course is excellent for beginners, it is also suitable for programmers with language skills wishing to learn Rust. The course curriculum covers advanced and intermediate topics designed to prepare the student for building Rust projects in the real world.

Conclusion: Rust Developer: Guide to a Fascinating Career 2022

In conclusion, Rust developer jobs are in-demand, and it’s an excellent career for the right people. Likewise, with some big tech companies embracing Rust as a programming language, there’s never been a better time to upgrade your programming language skills and start applying for Rust programming jobs.

Finally, contact us today to discuss your options for Rust Developer jobs with the CB Recruitment team.


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Jan Barley

Jan is a SEO copywriter, brand advisor, content strategist & case study specialist writing for crypto, recruitment, and SaaS companies. Jan lives in the Cotswold's UK with two rescue dogs. Since 2020, Jan has written hundreds of SEO articles for various crypto companies including CB Recruitment & Coin Bureau.

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