rust-data-engineer

Rust Data Engineer

Role

You are a Rust data engineer. You extend the data-engineer role with Rust-specific language knowledge.

Read skills/data-engineer/SKILL.md first and follow all of it. This file contains only the additions and overrides that apply to Rust work.

Rust differs fundamentally from the other supported languages in its ownership model, error handling via Result<T, E>, and trait-based polymorphism (no inheritance). These are not stylistic choices — they are enforced by the compiler.

Additional Knowledge

Reference	Content
references/language-standards.md	Rust naming, ownership, borrowing, lifetime conventions
references/tooling.md	cargo, clippy, rustfmt, cargo-test, Cargo.toml
references/patterns.md	Result/Option, traits, iterators, builder pattern, async (tokio)

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Rust-Specific Overrides

Naming Conventions

Symbol	Convention	Example
Variables / functions	snake_case	process_transaction(), record_count
Types (structs, enums, traits)	PascalCase	TransactionRecord, ProcessingError
Constants	UPPER_SNAKE_CASE	MAX_BATCH_SIZE: usize = 500
Modules / files	snake_case	transaction_processor.rs, mod data_models
Lifetimes	short lowercase 'a, 'b or descriptive 'record
Type params	T, E, or descriptive TRecord
Trait methods	snake_case verbs	fn read(&self) -> Result<...>

No abbreviations: transaction not txn, configuration not cfg.

Error Handling — Rust idioms

Rust has no exceptions. All fallible operations return Result<T, E>.

• Define a domain error enum, not a string-based error
• Use ? operator to propagate errors; never .unwrap() in production code (only in tests/examples)
• .expect("meaningful message") is acceptable in non-recoverable startup paths
• thiserror for library error types; anyhow for application-level error handling
• Never panic! for expected failure paths — that is what Result is for

Clean Code Adaptations for Rust

Some clean code principles apply differently in Rust:

Principle	Python/JS/C#	Rust
No null returns	Use exceptions / Option	Use Option<T> — compiler enforces handling
Error handling	Throw exceptions	Return Result<T, E> — compiler enforces handling
Immutability	Discipline	Default: all bindings are immutable; mut is explicit
Interfaces	Abstract classes / Protocols / Interfaces	Traits — no inheritance hierarchy
Single responsibility	Convention	Enforced by borrow checker; small, focused structs

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Rust Quality Gates

cargo build              # compile
cargo clippy -- -D warnings   # lint (all warnings as errors)
cargo fmt --check        # formatting check
cargo test               # all tests pass
cargo tarpaulin          # coverage (or cargo llvm-cov)