Director of Design Engineering

hatch I.T. is partnering with Babel Street to find a Director of Design Engineering. Please see details below:

About the Role

Babel Street is building mission-ready intelligence applications that help analysts move from signal to insight faster, with higher trust. As the Director of Design Engineering, you will own the end-to-end product experience key workflows—designing intuitive interfaces and shipping production-grade front-end code that integrates AI directly into the user journey. 

This is a “builder” role: you will pair human-centered design with strong front-end engineering to deliver experiences that feel simple, fast, and trustworthy—even when the underlying systems (data fusion, entity resolution, AI agents, multimodal analytics) are complex. You’ll collaborate tightly with Product, Platform, and AI teams to operationalize AI in the UI with guardrails, transparency, and human-machine teaming. 

This is a hybrid role working out of either their Reston, VA or their Somerville, MA office.

About the Company

Babel Street is the trusted technology partner for the world’s most advanced identity intelligence and risk operations. They 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 empowers 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.

What you will do:

Own the AI-first user experience for intelligence workflows 

Design and implement workflows where AI meaningfully reduces cognitive load (e.g., investigation setup, triage, summarization, entity linking, report generation, alert review). 

Build “AI-in-the-flow” patterns: inline suggestions, copilots, agent task panels, explainable recommendations, smart defaults, and guided wizards—without turning the product into a chat box. 

Define interaction patterns for agentic experiences (tasking, progress, tool calls, approvals, undo/redo, auditability, and fail-safe fallbacks). 

Human-Centered Design (HCD) with real users and real constraints 

Conduct lightweight user research (interviews, usability tests, workflow observation) and translate insights into journey maps, task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and shipped UI. 

Partner with Product to clarify user problems, success criteria, and tradeoffs—then execute quickly and iteratively. 

Ensure the UX supports novice-to-expert progression (discoverability for new users, speed and power features for experts). 

Build and ship high-quality front-end software 

Implement designs in a modern front-end stack (typically React + TypeScript), delivering clean, testable, accessible, performant UI. 

Build reusable components and patterns; contribute to (or lead) a design system using tools like Figma + Storybook. 

Instrument experiences with analytics/telemetry to measure adoption, workflow success, and time-to-insight improvements. 

Trust, safety, and transparency in AI experiences 

Design for “evidence-first” outputs: citations, sources, confidence indicators, what-changed diffs, and clear user controls. 

Implement guardrails in the UI: policy-aware interactions, redaction/PII-aware patterns (where applicable), and safe failure modes. 

Close the loop with feedback: capture user ratings, corrections, and outcomes to improve models and workflows over time. 

Cross-functional execution and leadership 

Work daily with Product, AI/ML, and Backend teams to define API contracts, data needs, latency targets, and UX acceptance criteria. 

Raise the bar on craft: advocate for coherent UX, consistent patterns, and high-quality delivery—while keeping momentum and pragmatism. 

Mentor others informally through design critiques, code reviews, and clear communication. 

What you will bring:

10+ years of experience delivering UX/UI design + front-end engineering for modern web applications (or equivalent depth). 
Strong portfolio demonstrating shipped product work (not just concepts)—including complex workflows and/or data-rich applications. 
Proficiency building production UIs with React and TypeScript (or comparable modern framework experience). 
Fluency in HCD methods: user interviews, task analysis, prototyping, usability testing, and iterative delivery. 
Strong product instincts: can translate ambiguity into clear workflows, make smart tradeoffs, and ship in increments. 
Experience integrating with APIs and data services; comfort collaborating on interface contracts and edge cases. 
Working knowledge of accessibility (WCAG fundamentals), performance basics, and secure UI patterns (auth, RBAC-aware UX).