a bit difficult and controversial in Data Science, but okay. I’ve taught data scientists to use docker, I might be able to teach some Rust !
For anything that is not related to DS/ML/Opt, yes, start with Rust. I had tremendous success with distributed Rust microservices using ZeroMQ for backbone communication.
Not even. Some people start building big systems with Java or Go. It's entirely appropriate to start in Rust too once you're more proficient in it.