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TRM Labs is seeking a Senior Data Platform Engineer to join the Data Platform Serving team, which owns the StarRocks-backed serving layer for government cloud investigations. This role focuses on keeping the data infrastructure fast, reliable, and compliant as it scales across a regulated, high-availability government cloud deployment.
You will own performance tuning on the StarRocks serving layer, using AI-assisted query profiling to identify and fix slow query patterns before they impact customers. You'll build and harden data pipelines feeding government cloud investigations, leveraging AI code review workflows to ship reliable changes quickly in a high-compliance environment. A key responsibility is reducing single-point-of-failure risk by becoming the second engineer capable of independently operating and troubleshooting the serving layer, cutting incident response time during outages.
The role requires hands-on experience operating distributed OLAP or serving-layer systems (StarRocks, Trino, ClickHouse, or similar), including query tuning and performance optimization at scale. You should have a track record owning data pipeline reliability and incident response, and comfort using AI tools (Claude, Cursor, or similar) to accelerate debugging, code review, and documentation. An independent ownership mindset is essential—you'll pick up unfamiliar production infrastructure, use AI-assisted research to ramp quickly, and take on-call responsibility with minimal oversight.
U.S. citizenship is required due to government cloud data access requirements. The Data Platform Serving team is distributed but communicates constantly via Slack and async documentation, with a bias toward direct, evidence-based technical discussion. Decisions are made close to the data by the engineers operating the systems. You'll work closely with Forward Deployed Engineering and Product teams to maintain parity between the government cloud and commercial platforms.
The team operates with weekly syncs to review incidents and compliance milestones, async daily updates on pipeline health, sprint-based planning with clear ownership, and post-incident retros. TRM moves quickly with high velocity and high ownership expectations. The work sits at the intersection of AI, national security, and crime-fighting, with complex problems and real stakes. You should expect priorities to shift, operate with ambiguity, maintain high personal accountability, and collaborate closely across teams in a fast-paced, intense environment.
