AI Research Engineer

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 Research Engineer will join our AI Engineering team, a group focused on advancing model selection, fine-tuning, and evaluation strategies for production-scale AI systems. As a senior individual contributor, this person will lead technical efforts to push the boundaries of model performance and orchestration, directly impacting the competitiveness of our AI Engineering platform. The impact you will have: - Design, build, and own a production-grade evaluation system that drives measurable improvements in model accuracy and latency. - Lead experimentation, fine-tuning, and feedback-based evaluation loops for continuous model optimization. - Advance the orchestration of AI/ML systems, ensuring scalable, resilient, and high-impact deployments. - Elevate technical standards through engineering craftsmanship, mentorship, and leadership as a senior IC. What we’re looking for: - Advanced programming expertise in Python and SQL, with strong system design skills. - Deep experience deploying machine learning/deep learning models in production (LLM/GenAI strongly preferred). - Strong foundation in experimentation frameworks, evaluation metrics, and ML Ops practices. - Proven ability to own critical systems end-to-end and collaborate effectively with cross-functional partners. 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 - As a globally distributed team, members may observe different timezones. However, most of the team will overlap between the hours of 7am-12pm PST for meetings and collaboration - All team members, regardless of location must have at least 4 hour overlap with PST business hours - The team is involved in 2 different on-calls: ◦ Analytics on-call: only requires focus on working time (average of < 1 hour a day every month) ◦ Data Science on-call: full week on-call to ensure Data Science pipelines are running smoothly (average of 1-2 hours a day every 3 months) The following represents the expected range of compensation for this role: - Individual pay is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. The compensation details listed in this posting reflect the US base salary only. - The estimated base salary range for this role is $200,000 - $275,000 - Additionally, this role may be eligible to participate in TRM’s equity plan. - Please note – we factor in the different costs for geographies outside the United States. LIFE AT TRM We are building a safer world. That promise shows up in how we work every day. TRM moves quickly. We are a high velocity, high ownership team that expects clarity, follow-through, and impact. People who thrive here are energized by hard problems, experimentation, and continuous feedback. If something takes months elsewhere, it will ship here in days. Our work sits at the intersection of AI, national security, and fighting crime. The problems are complex, the stakes are real, and the environment evolves quickly. The pace and intensity of the work reflect the importance of the mission. As a result, the way we operate requires a high level of ownership, adaptability, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. At TRM, you should expect: - Priorities and targets to change quickly as we experiment and iterate - Work that often requires operating with a high degree of ambiguity - A high level