Sr. Director of Engineering - API

Hatch IT • Somerville, MA

20h • Hybrid

About The Position

Babel Street is seeking a senior technical leader to define and deliver its API and Model Context Protocol (MCP) platform strategy as the company evolves toward an AI-native, agent-driven platform. The role is hands-on and focused on building API-first platform capabilities that enable developers and AI agents to interact with Babel Street services. It leads the design and implementation of semantic APIs, MCP integrations, and context-aware service patterns for next-generation intelligence workflows.

The position partners closely with AI, Data, and Platform teams to make APIs and services consistent, discoverable, scalable, and suitable for agentic workflows. It also works with the Architecture function to align platform decisions with the broader technical vision while maintaining a focus on execution and delivery. The role is hybrid from the Reston, Virginia, or Somerville, Massachusetts, office; full remote may be considered.

The role spans API platform strategy and governance, MCP and agent integration, semantic and agent-ready interfaces, and context-management and runtime patterns. It establishes API standards for design, versioning, discoverability, reliability, performance, and governance; develops MCP patterns for service exposure, discovery, communication, and context-aware interactions; and promotes documentation-as-code and semantic modeling for APIs intended for both developers and AI systems. It also defines patterns for context retrieval and caching, session and state management, and memory-aware service interactions, including scalable context-aware systems using technologies such as Vertex AI Context Caching.

The position provides hands-on technical leadership and mentorship, builds reusable frameworks and components, drives adoption of API and MCP standards across engineering teams, and partners with Google and other vendors on platform capabilities. Early success includes assessing the current platform, defining strategy and standards, delivering initial frameworks, and bringing agent-ready APIs and MCP-enabled services into production.

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.
• Define context-management patterns for agent workflows.
• Partner with AI and Data teams to enable agent-native architectures.
• Establish API governance and platform standards, including patterns for design, versioning, discoverability, reliability, and performance.
• 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.
• Assess current API and platform architecture and identify opportunities for standardization.
• Establish documentation-as-code practices and API documentation optimized for agent consumption.
• Develop patterns for context retrieval and caching, session and state management, and memory-aware service interactions.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance premiums covered at 85–100% for employees and their families.
• Traditional and Roth 401(k) plans with a competitive 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