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) |
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 pathsthiserrorfor library error types;anyhowfor application-level error handling- Never
panic!for expected failure paths — that is whatResultis 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 |
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)Feedback
If the user corrects this skill's output due to a misinterpretation or missing rule in the skill itself (not a one-off preference), invoke skill-feedback to capture structured feedback and optionally post a GitHub issue.
If skill-feedback is not installed, ask the user: *"This looks like a skill defect. Would you like to install the skill-feedback skill to report it?"* If the user declines, continue without feedback capture.