Senior Director, API Platform & MCP Architecture (Hybrid)

Babel Street; Reston (VA); Hybrid; USD 220,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Retirement plan match

Unlimited flexible leave

12 federal holidays

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Babel Street seeks a Principal Engineer to lead API and MCP platform strategy, delivering API-first capabilities for developers and AI agents. You will align with Architecture and cross-functional teams to ensure scalable, consistent services and agent-driven workflows.

In this role you will set standards for API design, documentation, and governance, while mentoring engineers and partnering with external vendors to advance platform capabilities.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Experience operating at Principal Engineer or Staff+ level.
• Experience designing and building API-first platforms.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures (GCP preferred).

Responsibilities

• Partner with Architecture to define 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.

Skills

API-first platforms

Principal Engineer level

Cloud-native architecture (GCP)

Developer platforms / SOA

System design & architecture

Cross-team leadership

Job description

Babel Street seeks a Principal Engineer to lead API and MCP platform strategy, delivering API-first capabilities for developers and AI agents. You will align with Architecture and cross-functional teams to ensure scalable, consistent services and agent-driven workflows.

In this role you will set standards for API design, documentation, and governance, while mentoring engineers and partnering with external vendors to advance platform capabilities.