Product Engineering at TRM: Five Principles That Guide Why, What, and How We Build

At TRM Labs, we're on a mission to build a safer financial system for billions of people — delivering blockchain intelligence that helps financial institutions and governments fight fraud, money laundering, and financial crime.

The engineering requirements behind this goal are hefty: ingesting petabytes of blockchain data, incorporating threat patterns that shift daily, and surfacing actionable intelligence to customers — whether they're global banks or federal agencies — who stake real‑world decisions on the speed and clarity of our platform.

To turn these requirements into elegant, reliable products, we rely on a small but mighty product engineering team. They bridge user pain points with the deepest layers of TRM’s data platform, shipping features end to end — often in days, occasionally in hours — always focused on customer impact.

1. We don't shy away from solving hard problems

According to data from TRM, in 2024, global crypto transaction volume reached USD 10.6 trillion in 2024 (up 56 % from 2023), while illicit volume fell to USD 45 billion — comprising just 0.4 % of all crypto activity and marking a 51 % drop year‑over‑year. That progress is encouraging, but also means our users — investigators, compliance officers, analysts — still need fresh intelligence faster than the bad actors can adapt.

It's a balancing act: managing the 100+ million on‑chain events that roll into our product every day while helping investigators in real-time — for example, linking suspicious wallets to darknet markets. Our job is to ensure our product enables our customers to get answers as quickly as possible, with a clear graph of relationships the user can trust in court.

These customer expectations shape everything we do: how we design APIs, the care we put into front‑end performance, and the obsession we have with data integrity. Because the stakes are so high, quality isn’t a box we check — it is the product.

2. We operate with ownership, customer-centricity, and autonomy

Full‑stack ownership

Each engineer scopes user experience (UX) flows with our design and product teams, negotiates schema changes with our data platform colleagues, writes TypeScript services, and crafts React interactions. No one throws work over a wall; we own the feature from cradle to grave.

Customer‑first rituals

Customer success channels real‑time user feedback to us; and product and engineering host weekly syncs where we test requests and craft fast, efficient solutions that serve the diverse ways investigators, banks, and agencies rely on TRM.

Creative freedom

Many of our best features begin as in‑house “ad hoc wins.” Because TRM’s own teams rely on the product daily, our engineers can float an idea in Slack, spin up a branch, and ship a feature‑flagged version to internal users that same afternoon. Feedback arrives within minutes, and when the signal is strong, we graduate the experiment to a full release — no roadmap waiting room required.

3. We put TRM's leadership principles into action

Our product engineering culture is anchored in TRM’s three leadership principles, which guide every technical decision, design review, and line of code we write.

Impact‑oriented Trailblazer

We put customers first, structure problems with an 80/20 lens, actively seek diverse perspectives, and stay adaptable. When a compliance analyst flags a new laundering pattern at 9:00am, we rebuild a query plan by lunch — because high‑impact targets trump everything else.

Master Craftsperson

Craftsmanship, continuous learning, and "TRM speed" define our execution. We sweat the details in code reviews, learn new libraries over coffee chats, and aim to cut timelines by 50‑80 % through ruthless prioritization and clear ownership.

Inspiring Colleague

Vulnerability, candor, and positive energy fuel collaboration. We openly share constructive feedback, play for the front of the jersey, and cultivate an inclusive environment where every engineer can bring bold ideas without fear of failure.

These principles translate into pragmatic habits: writing decision docs before coding, feature‑flagging experiments for rapid iteration, and celebrating wins that lift the whole team — not just the author of the pull request.

4. We use AI as a force multiplier

Early adoption and experimentation has always been in TRM's  DNA. In that spirit, each week, our product engineering team hosts an AI learning session, where engineers demo fresh experiments — including prompt engineering tricks, in‑house copilots, and model benchmarks that shave hours off everyday tasks.

• AI tools now on every desk: Cursor’s context‑aware IDE, Claude, OpenAI, and Gemini accelerate debugging, test generation, and spike prototypes that used to take a full sprint.
• Home‑grown helpers: Hack days routinely spawn internal copilots that autocomplete SQL, surface docs inline, and summarize Slack threads — these are now staples across our product, customer success, and sales teams.
• Ethics and safety first: Guardrails, red team reviews, and rigorous data privacy checks ensure AI augments human insight without risking trust.

AI lets every developer punch above their weight — shipping solo what once took a full squad, and enabling us to learn, iterate, and innovate faster than ever.

5. We look for inspiring colleagues

In addition to believing in our mission and the urgency of building a safer financial system for billions, the kinds of engineers who thrive at TRM are those who...

• Treat ambiguity as adventure, not anxiety
• Write “why” docs before “how” code
• Prefer pairing over solo heroics
• Enjoy debates about index design and button copy
• Can laugh when the linters go down minutes before a demo

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Does this sound like you?

We’re hiring for full‑stack product engineers across the world. If you’re excited to ship features that matter the same week you write them, apply at trmlabs.com/careers or reach out directly at careers@trmlabs.com. Join us to help build the tools the good guys need — faster than the bad guys can move.