Sr. Director of Engineering - API

Hatch IT • Somerville, MA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Babel Street is seeking a senior technical leader to guide its API and Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform strategy and delivery as the company evolves toward an AI-native, agent-driven platform. This hands-on role combines technical direction with implementation of foundational systems, creating API-first capabilities that let developers and AI agents interact with Babel Street services. The role partners closely with AI, Data, Platform, product, engineering, and Architecture teams to deliver consistent, discoverable, scalable services optimized for agentic workflows and aligned with the company’s broader architectural vision.

The position spans API platform strategy and governance; MCP and agent integration; semantic, agent-ready APIs and documentation; and context management and runtime patterns. The role defines standards and reusable frameworks, delivers context-aware service patterns, and drives adoption across engineering teams. It also involves working with Google and other vendors on platform capabilities.

The position is hybrid from the Reston, Virginia or Somerville, Massachusetts office. Full remote may be considered.

Requirements

• 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 is preferred.
• Experience building developer platforms or service-oriented architectures.
• Strong system design and architectural thinking skills.
• Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives.

Nice To Haves

• 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 such as 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.

Responsibilities

• Partner 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, including service exposure, discovery, and agent-to-service communication.
• Define context management patterns for agent workflows, including context retrieval and caching, session and state management, and memory-aware service interactions.
• Partner with AI and Data teams to enable agent-native architectures and workflows.
• Establish API governance and platform standards for service design, versioning, discoverability, consistency, reliability, and performance.
• Build foundational platform 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.
• Assess existing API and platform architecture and identify opportunities for standardization.
• Develop and roll out semantic API patterns and MCP integration approaches.
• Help bring agent-ready APIs and MCP-enabled services into production and improve API consistency and developer velocity.

Benefits

• Babel Street covers 85–100% of monthly premium costs for medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance for employees and their families.
• Traditional and Roth 401(k) plans with a competitive company match.
• Unlimited flexible leave.
• 12 paid federal holidays.
• Tuition reimbursement for continuing education.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed