Sr. Director of Engineering - API

Babel Street delivers advanced AI and data analytics solutions for identity intelligence and risk operations, serving government and commercial organizations worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, with offices in Boston, Cleveland, Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and the U.K.

About the role

We are seeking a Principal Engineer to lead Babel Street's API and MCP platform strategy and delivery as we evolve toward an AI-native, agent-driven platform. This is a hands-on, senior technical leadership role responsible for defining and delivering API-first platform capabilities that enable both developers and AI agents to interact with Babel Street's services. You will lead the design and implementation of semantic APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, and context-aware service patterns that power next-generation intelligence workflows. This role requires a finger-on-keyboard engineer who can both define direction and deliver foundational systems. You will partner closely with AI, Data, and Platform teams to ensure Babel Street's APIs and services are consistent, discoverable, scalable, and optimized for agentic workflows. You will work in close partnership with the Architecture function to align on long-term technical direction, ensuring API and MCP platform decisions are consistent with the company's broader architectural vision while maintaining a strong focus on execution and delivery. This is a hybrid role working out of either our Reston, VA or Somerville, MA office. Full remote may be considered.

Why This Role Matters

This role will be instrumental to Babel Street's AI-native technology strategy. The API and MCP platform will serve as the interface layer between data, AI, and product capabilities, enabling agents, developers, and systems to interact seamlessly.

Role

This is a high-impact, senior technical leadership role with broad influence across the organization and the opportunity to shape the future of Babel Street's platform. The position spans four core domains:

• API Platform & Strategy: Define and lead Babel Street's API-first platform strategy, establishing consistent patterns for service design, versioning, discoverability, and governance. Evolve the platform toward agent-ready APIs, ensuring services are consumable by both human developers and AI agents. Establish standards for API consistency, reliability, and performance across the organization. Work closely with product and engineering teams to ensure APIs are designed as first-class platform capabilities, not just service interfaces.
• MCP & Agent Integration: Lead Babel Street's Model Context Protocol (MCP) strategy and implementation, enabling agents and AI systems to interact with services in a standardized and scalable way. This includes defining patterns for MCP service exposure, tool and service discovery, agent-to-service communication, and context-aware interactions. Partner closely with AI and platform teams to enable agent-native workflows across the organization.
• Semantic APIs & Agent-Ready Interfaces: Lead the design of semantic, agent-friendly APIs, where documentation becomes a first-class interface for AI-driven systems. Define standards for API descriptions optimized for agents, schema consistency and semantic modeling, tool and service discoverability, and API documentation optimized for agent consumption. Establish best practices for documentation-as-code, ensuring APIs are designed for both developers and AI systems.
• Context Management & Runtime Patterns: Define patterns for context-aware APIs and services, including context management and retrieval, context caching, session and state management, and memory-aware service interactions. Help design scalable context-aware systems leveraging technologies such as Vertex AI Context Caching and related frameworks.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner closely with Architecture to define and lead Babel Street's API and MCP platform strategy
• Design and deliver semantic, agent-ready APIs
• Establish MCP standards and implementation patterns
• Define context management patterns for agent workflows
• Partner with AI and Data teams to enable agent-native architectures
• Establish API governance and platform standards
• Build foundational frameworks and reusable components
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship
• Partner with Google and other vendors on platform capabilities
• Drive adoption of API and MCP standards across engineering teams

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience operating at Principal Engineer or Staff+ level
• Strong hands-on experience building distributed systems
• Experience designing and building API-first platforms
• Experience with cloud-native architectures (GCP preferred)
• Experience building developer platforms or service-oriented architectures
• Strong system design and architectural thinking skills
• Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on work with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Familiarity with Vertex AI Agent Engine
• Background in ADK and reasoning frameworks such as LangChain
• Understanding of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Exposure to data warehouse technologies like BigQuery and Snowflake
• Knowledge of Apigee or similar API gateway solutions
• Proven ability to design semantic APIs for AI or agent-driven use cases
• Experience managing context or building memory systems
• Development of agent-based architectures or orchestration frameworks
• Exposure to Anti-Gravity

What Success Looks Like

• 30 Days: Assess current API and platform architecture; define API and MCP platform strategy; identify early opportunities for standardization
• 60 Days: Deliver initial platform frameworks and standards; begin rollout of semantic API patterns; establish MCP integration approach
• 90 Days: Agent-ready APIs in production; MCP-enabled services deployed; clear platform standards adopted across teams; measurable improvement in API consistency and developer velocity

Benefits

• Health Benefits: Babel Street covers 85-100% monthly premium costs for Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability insurances – for you and your family
• Retirement Plans: Traditional and Roth 401(K) with a very competitive match
• Unlimited Flexible Leave: Employees manage their own time and balance personal and work lives
• Holidays: 12 paid Federal Holidays
• Tuition Reimbursement Program for continuing education

Pay

Range for this position based on qualifications and experience: $220,000 - $240,000 USD

Schedule

Hybrid role working out of either our Reston, VA or Somerville, MA office. Full remote may be considered.