Sr. Director of Engineering - API

babelstreet; Reston (VA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Babel Street is seeking a Principal Engineer in Reston, VA to lead API and MCP platform strategy and delivery. This hands-on senior role drives semantic API design, MCP integrations, and context-aware service patterns to empower developers and AI agents across Babel Street's services.

You will partner with AI, Data, and Platform teams to ensure APIs are scalable, discoverable, and optimized for agentic workflows while aligning with long-term architectural direction.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience with API-first platforms.
• Experience leading MCP or similar integrations.
• Strong hands-on technical leadership and mentoring skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead API and MCP platform strategy and delivery across teams.
• Define semantic APIs and agent-friendly interfaces.
• Establish patterns for context management and agent workflows.
• Partner with Architecture, AI, Data, and Platform teams to ensure scalable, discoverable APIs.

Skills

API design

MCP integration

Semantic APIs

Agent-ready interfaces

Leadership

Documentation-as-code

Tools

Vertex AI

Job description

Role Summary

Babel Street is the trusted technology partner for the world's most advanced identity intelligence and risk operations. We deliver advanced AI and data analytics solutions providing unmatched, analysis-ready data regardless of language, proactive risk identification, 360-degree insights, high-speed automation, and seamless integration into existing systems. Babel Street empower s government and commercial organizations to transform high-stakes identity and risk operations into a strategic advantage . The actionable insights we deliver safeguard lives and protect critical assets around the world . Babel Street is headquartered in Reston, Virginia , with regional offices in Boston, MA and Cleveland, OH, and international offices in Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and the U.K. For more information, visit www. babelstreet.com .

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.

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

You will define and lead Babel Street's API-first platform strategy , establishing consistent patterns for service design, versioning, discoverability, and governance.

You will help evolve the platform toward agent-ready APIs, ensuring services are consumable by both human developers and AI agents. You will establish standards for API consistency, reliability, and performance across the organization.

You will also work closely with product and engineering teams to ensure APIs are designed as first-class platform capabilities, not just service interfaces.

MCP & Agent Integration

You will 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
• Context-aware interactions

You will partner closely with AI and platform teams to enable agent-native workflows across the organization.

Semantic APIs & Agent-Ready Interfaces

You will lead the design of semantic, agent-friendly APIs, where documentation becomes a first-class interface for AI-driven systems. This includes defining standards for:

• API descriptions optimized for agents
• Schema consistency and semantic modeling
• Tool and service discoverability
• API documentation optimized for agent consumption

You will establish best practices for documentation-as-code, ensuring APIs are designed for both developers and AI systems.

Context Management & Runtime Patterns

You will define patterns for context-aware APIs and services, including:

• Context management and retrieval
• Context caching
• Session and state management
• Memory-aware service interactions

You will 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