Staff Data Engineer - AI Platform

As a Staff Data Engineer on TRM Labs' Data Platform Serving team, you own the performance and reliability of the StarRocks-backed serving layer that powers government cloud investigations. You'll join as the second engineer responsible for this critical infrastructure, working in one of the most operationally demanding environments at TRM: a regulated, high-availability government cloud deployment where speed and reliability directly enable investigators to disrupt crime.

What you'll do

• Own performance tuning on the StarRocks serving layer, using AI-assisted query profiling tools to identify and fix slow query patterns before they become customer-facing incidents.
• Build and harden data pipelines feeding government cloud investigations, using AI code review workflows to ship reliable changes faster in a high-compliance environment.
• Reduce single-point-of-failure risk on GovCloud data infrastructure by becoming the second engineer who can independently operate and troubleshoot the serving layer, cutting incident response time when the primary owner is unavailable.
• Use AI-assisted debugging and log analysis to triage production issues in a regulated environment, turning multi-hour investigations into rapid root-cause fixes.

What you bring

• U.S. citizenship, required for government cloud data access.
• Hands-on experience operating distributed OLAP or serving-layer systems such as StarRocks, Trino, or ClickHouse, including query tuning and performance optimization at scale.
• Experience owning data pipeline reliability and incident response, and comfort using AI tools like Claude or Cursor to accelerate debugging, code review, and documentation.
• An independent ownership mindset: you can pick up unfamiliar production infrastructure, use AI-assisted research and code exploration to ramp quickly, and take on-call responsibility with minimal oversight.
• AI fluency at a top 10 percent level in your function, applying AI to accelerate workflows, structure problems, improve output quality, and increase speed and leverage.

What we offer

• The opportunity to build hands-on distributed systems experience in a regulated, high-availability government cloud environment.
• Work on a team that communicates constantly across async channels with a bias toward direct, evidence-based technical discussion.
• Close collaboration with Forward Deployed Engineering and Product teams to maintain parity between government cloud and commercial platforms.
• A mission-driven role in AI-powered intelligence that helps public and private sector agencies investigate and disrupt crime.

About TRM Labs

TRM Labs is a Series C company with $220M in total funding, backed by Goldman Sachs, Bessemer, Y Combinator, Thoma Bravo, and others. TRM provides AI-powered intelligence solutions that help agencies investigate and disrupt crime. Headquartered in San Francisco, TRM operates as a distributed-first company with hubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., London, and Singapore.