Not every Rust engineer writes compilers – some focus on the systems that keep the ecosystem running. Through Rust infrastructure engineering, Marco Ieni has built his career around developer tooling, open-source collaboration, and making Rust safer and easier to work with as an Infrastructure Engineer at the Rust Foundation.
FROM EMBEDDED SYSTEMS TO RUST
Marco began his career in embedded development, working primarily with C and C++. That changed when he discovered Rust and quickly got hooked. Coming from C++, he found Rust’s safety features, especially ownership and lifetimes, made immediate sense.
“Instead of managing memory manually, you rely on the borrow checker. It just clicked.”
Determined to use Rust professionally, Marco moved from embedded systems to backend development. He joined TrueLayer to work on a payments system written entirely in Rust – an event-driven microservices platform handling sensitive transactions.
DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE AT PRISMA
From there, Marco joined Prisma, known for its ORM for TypeScript and JavaScript. His focus shifted toward improving developer experience, building tools that make life easier for engineers. That passion eventually led him to his current role at the Rust Foundation.
“I’ve always cared about making tools that help developers work more efficiently. At the Foundation, I get to do that at scale, for the entire Rust ecosystem.”
BUILDING THE RUST PROJECT’S INFRASTRUCTURE
At the Rust Foundation, Marco is part of a small team managing critical infrastructure. That includes:
- Maintaining the Rust CI, which builds and tests the compiler
- Running key services like DocsRS and Crates.io
- Writing and maintaining Terraform code for infrastructure-as-code
- Backing up Rust artifacts across multiple cloud providers for reliability
Because these systems require high-level access, roles like Marco’s are handled by Foundation employees, not volunteers, to ensure accountability and security.
AUTOMATING CRATE RELEASES WITH RELEASE-PLZ
Outside of work, Marco also maintains Release-Plz, a tool that automates releasing Rust crates to Crates.io. It handles version bumps, changelogs, semver checks, and publishing, all from CI.
“It started as a side project at TrueLayer. I wanted to make publishing crates less painful, and now it has over 40 contributors.”
He’s moved the project to a GitHub org, added Open Collective support, and is now looking for more maintainers to help take it further.
GETTING INVOLVED IN THE RUST PROJECT
One of the most common questions Marco gets is how to contribute to Rust. His advice? Start small and show up consistently.
“Join Zulip, pick a team that interests you, like DocsRS or Crates.io, and ask for good first issues. If you stick with it, you’ll become part of the team.”
He also encourages more developers to contribute to existing open-source projects instead of feeling like they have to start their own.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR RUST INFRASTRUCTURE?
Marco’s excited about upcoming work on The Update Framework (TUF), which will improve the security and reliability of crate publishing. He’s also helping set up redundant backups for Rust artifacts, managed across different cloud providers with separate access controls, a move that boosts long-term resilience.
WHY RUST?
For Marco, the biggest selling point of Rust is the compiler.
“You’re going to miss things after hours at the keyboard. But the Rust compiler catches issues before they catch you at 3 AM. That kind of safety is priceless.”
