Senior Data Scientist, Model Engineering

Build to Protect Civilization

TRM is a blockchain intelligence company that’s on a mission to build a safer financial system for billions of people. We’re a lean, high-impact team tackling some of the world’s most critical challenges, ranging from human trafficking and financial fraud to terrorist financing. We are builders who power governments, financial institutions, and crypto companies when the clock is running and the consequences are real. This is why every TRMer is a bet on our future and has the power to change our trajectory.

About the Position

As a Senior Data Scientist on the AI Engineering team, you will drive the development and deployment of sophisticated machine learning and LLM models that power TRM's AI Engineering platform. Working closely with engineers, data scientists, and research scientists, you will build cutting-edge AI systems that help analysts detect, prevent, and mitigate cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime.

Your work will focus on creating intelligent agent systems and evaluation frameworks that enable seamless interaction with complex blockchain data. These tools will be consumed by prestigious entities such as former FBI, Secret Service, and other law enforcement agencies, providing them with unprecedented capabilities to investigate evolving criminal activities in the cryptocurrency space.

The impact you will have here:

• Design and deploy sophisticated ML/LLM models that accomplish impactful customer needs within TRM’s AI Engineering platform

• Develop robust catalogs of evaluation sets and observability tools for ML/LLM models to ensure reliable performance in production environments

• Monitor for data drift, concept drift, and emerging failure modes in production AI systems serving critical law enforcement use cases

• Leverage embeddings, retrieval, and ranking methods to improve agent tool selection and enhance the product experience for analysts

• Build models and analyses that optimize orchestration of multi-agent workflows, enabling complex investigative tasks through natural language interactions

• Stay up-to-date on state-of-the-art model and system design, easily implementing modern architecture patterns to serve external users

• Translate vague infrastructure and product requirements into measurable, data-driven metrics and evaluation frameworks

• Collaborate with engineers and research scientists to design agentic systems that analyze complex blockchain data structures, cryptographic protocols, and transactional patterns

• Create evaluation frameworks that measure the effectiveness of AI agents in helping investigators navigate blockchain data and identify suspicious activities

• Establish best practices for LLM evaluation, prompt engineering, and AI system monitoring

What we're looking for:

• You have 4+ years of experience working in a data science role, with demonstrated expertise in machine learning and data science

• Strong fluency with Python and SQL, with proven experience developing code in team environments (git, notebooks, testing)

• Strong background in data science, experimental design, and hypothesis testing

• Experience evaluating and building LLMs, embeddings, knowledge graphs, and information retrieval systems

• Industry experience with ML/AI methods (NLP, RLHF, embeddings) to analyze and improve agent behaviors

• Industry experience with with ML/AI Ops and production system monitoring

• Ability to analyze large, multi-modal datasets (text, logs, graphs, APIs) for actionable insights

• Strong ownership mentality and comfort with uncertainty - ability to translate ambiguous intelligence questions into measurable evaluation frameworks

• History of taking strong ownership over systems and delivering value at high velocity

• Curiosity and drive to get to the root cause of problems, with evidence of creativity and self-directed work in ambiguous spaces

• Building and delivering Agentic/LLM systems with active users would raise the bar (industry experience preferred, but hobby or open source contributions valued, given the emerging nature of the technology)

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

• This role will be required to be in the SF office 5 days a week.

• As a globally distributed team, members may observe different time zones. 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 hours of 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:

• The estimated base salary range for this role is $170,000 - $195,000. Please note that the base range is applicable to the US and will be different depending on the country.

• Additionally, this role may be eligible to participate in TRM’s equity plan.

Life at TRM

We build to protect civilization. That promise shows up in how we work every day.

TRM runs fast. Really fast. We’re a high-velocity team that expects ownership, clarity, and follow-through. People who thrive here are inspired by hard problems, experimentation, direct feedback. If it takes months elsewhere, it often ships here in days. If you are optimizing primarily for consistent work-life balance, use the interview process to pressure-test fit. We want teammates who thrive here, not just survive here.

We coach directly, assume positive intent, and play for the front of the jersey.

Leadership Principles

• Impact-Oriented Trailblazer: We put customers first, driving for speed, focus, and adaptability.

• Master Craftsperson: We prioritize speed, high standards, and distributed ownership.

• Inspiring Colleague: We value humility, candor, and a one-team mindset.

Want to learn more about how we interview at TRM Labs? Check out more about our leadership principles and hiring process here.

What You’ll Do Here

This work has teeth. At TRM, your week might include:

• Driving critical investigations that can’t wait for typical business hours.

• Shipping products in days when others would schedule quarters.

• Partnering with teams across time zones to deliver insights while the story is still unfolding.

• Building new solutions from first principles when the playbook doesn’t yet exist.

• Protecting victims and customers by tracing illicit activity and disrupting criminal networks.

Join our Mission

We look for people who want their work to matter, who build with speed and rigor, and who take pride in protecting others through their craft. If you’re excited by TRM’s mission but don’t check every box, apply anyway. We hire for slope, judgment, and the will to learn fast.

Build to protect civilization. Let’s do it together.

Recruitment agencies

TRM Labs does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to TRM employees. TRM Labs is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company without a signed agreement.

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