Staff Software Engineer, Agent Engineering

Build a Safer World

TRM Labs provides AI-powered intelligence solutions that help public and private sector agencies investigate and disrupt crime. TRM's platforms enable investigators to trace illicit activity, build cases, and construct operating pictures of threat networks. Leading agencies and businesses worldwide rely on TRM to make the world safer and more secure.

The AI Engineering Team is chartered with enabling next-generation AI applications, with a special focus on Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic systems. Our mission is to build robust pipelines, high-performance infrastructure, and operational tooling that allow AI systems to be deployed with speed, safety, and scale.

We manage petabyte-scale pipelines, serve models with millisecond-level latency, and provide the observability and governance needed to make AI production-ready. We’re also deeply involved in evaluating and integrating cutting-edge tools in the LLM and agent space — including open-source stacks, vector databases, evaluation frameworks, and orchestration tools that unlock TRM’s ability to innovate faster than the market.

The impact you will have:

• Architect and implement a robust agentic framework that supports tool use, context retrieval, memory, and planning
• Build intelligent, modular agents that automate investigative tasks and augment analyst decision-making
• Extend and scale our LLM infrastructure (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, local models), including prompt engineering, RAG, and evaluation loops
• Design safe, observable, and auditable agent behaviors — ensuring reliability in high-sensitivity environments
• Evaluate performance across metrics like reasoning, latency, success rate, and hallucination, and iterate based on user feedback and system telemetry
• Contribute to a culture of high ownership, rapid experimentation, and ethical AI deployment

What we’re looking for:

• Strong engineering background with deep experience in backend or systems work (Python preferred)
• Hands-on experience building with LLMs, agents, and tooling frameworks (LangChain, semantic caches, vector DBs, etc.)
• Comfort working with agentic pipelines and optimizing information flow into AI systems
• Thoughtful approach to system design, with an eye for safety, scalability, and explainability
• High product empathy - you care about how agents impact real users (analysts) and optimize accordingly
• Bias toward experimentation and iteration - you’re excited to try, learn, and ship fast
• Previous experience with knowledge graphs, task orchestration, or AI safety a plus

About the Team:

The AI Engineering team operates with a high level of collaboration and interdependence, fostering an inclusive culture where connections extend beyond work. We value diverse personalities and seek someone who is both results-driven and sociable, with strong communication, leadership, and teamwork skills, along with a positive, solutions-oriented mindset.

Learn about TRM Speed in this position:

• Rapid Issue Resolution. TRM Engineers identify and resolve critical onsite issues in minutes to hours, not weeks. We create virtual war rooms, implement fixes, and share lessons with both customer stakeholders and internal teams within 48 hours.
• Navigating Bureaucracy. We anticipate and address procedural hurdles, build trust with key stakeholders, and find alternative pathways to approvals. This keeps projects moving even in complex environments.
• Efficient Knowledge Transfer. Engineers document and share updates in real time, ensuring the entire team—onsite and remote—has full visibility into plans, blockers, and resolutions. Knowledge sharing sessions and clear documentation reduce friction and accelerate delivery.

About TRM's Engineering Levels:

Engineer: Responsible for helping to define project milestones and executing small decision decisions independently with the appropriate tradeoffs between simplicity, readability, and performance. Provides mentorship to junior engineers, and enhances operational excellence through tech debt reduction and knowledge sharing.

Senior Engineer: Successfully designs and documents system improvements and features for an OKR/project from the ground up. Consistently delivers efficient and reusable systems, optimizes team throughput with appropriate tradeoffs, mentors team members, and enhances cross-team collaboration through documentation and knowledge sharing.

Staff Engineer: Drives scoping and execution of one or more OKRs/projects that impact multiple teams. Partners with stakeholders to set the team vision and technical roadmaps for one or more products. Is a role model and mentor to the entire engineering organization. Ensures system health and quality with operational reviews, testing strategies, and monitoring rigor.