Director, Engineering - Avalara Developer Experience Platform

Avalara

3d • Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a Director/Sr. Director to lead Avalara’s Agentic Developer Experience (DX) Platform — focused on enabling developers and AI agents to seamlessly discover, understand, and integrate with Avalara’s products.
This role owns the external developer experience layer, including exposing documentation for agent-facing interfaces (e.g., MCP), documentation and knowledge systems, interactive tooling, and AI-powered integration accelerators. You will partner closely with domain-focused product engineering who own APIs, MCP tools, backend systems and the partner engineering team, and ensure these capabilities are exposed in a consistent, intuitive, and agent-friendly manner for developer and partners.
#LI-Remote

Requirements

• B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field AND 12+ years of relevant experience in developer platforms, APIs, or DX leadership roles.
• Experience leading developer platforms or DX initiatives at scale
• Experience building external platforms or partner ecosystems
• Proven ability to influence across teams
• Experience defining and driving platform standards
• Deep understanding of API design and developer workflows
• Demonstrated experience with AI/LLM or agent-based systems
• Strong data-driven mindset
• Strong product and platform thinking
• Proven ability to influence across teams without direct ownership.
• Curiosity that uncovers opportunities where none seemingly exist.
• Customer obsession that inspires product engineering teams to reduce debt and backlog and improve overall consistency.
• Hands-on leadership mindset
• Roll-up-your-sleeves mindset with willingness to leverage the latest tools, demonstrate how things should be done, and raise the bar for your team and peers.

Responsibilities

• Agent Experience Layer
• Build and evolve the external MCP-based interface and tool catalog for building integrations
• Standardize how APIs and capabilities are exposed to AI agents
• Define best practices for agent-tool interactions (schemas, patterns, guardrails)
• Developer Portal & Knowledge Experience
• Own the developer documentation platform, IA, and UX
• Ensure documentation freshness and accuracy via automation (spec ↔ docs sync, drift detection)
• Deliver task-oriented, cross-product integration guides
• Interactive Sandbox & Exploration
• Provide API exploration, testing, and simulation environments
• Enable safe experimentation for developers and agents (mock + sandbox)
• Sample Apps & AI Integration Kits
• Build and maintain reference implementations and starter kits
• Deliver agent-ready examples, prompts, and integration patterns
• Define and promote “golden paths” for common integrations
• Integration Acceleration (AI-first)
• Develop AI-powered tools and workflows that reduce time-to-integration
• Create reusable “skills” for common use cases (e.g., tax calculation flows)
• Enable partners to build faster using AI-assisted approaches
• DX Standards & Cross-Team Alignment
• Define and drive adoption of API, MCP, and documentation standards
• Partner with product teams to ensure consistent external experience
• Establish versioning, deprecation, and usability guidelines
• Partner Enablement & Ecosystem Growth
• Lead developer onboarding and partner integration journeys
• Support strategic partners with co-build and acceleration frameworks
• Improve integration success rates across the ecosystem
• Observability & Continuous Improvement
• Define and track DX metrics (time-to-first-success, integration success rate, agent task completion)
• Build feedback loops from usage, errors, and developer input
• Continuously improve experience based on real-world signals

Benefits

• In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.
• Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.
• Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director