Principal Engineer, API & MCP Platform

hatch I.T. is partnering with Babel Street to find a Principal Engineer, API & MCP Platform. Please see details below:

About the Role

Babel Street is 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 their Reston, VA or Somerville, MA office. Full remote may be considered.

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.

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. 

What you will do:

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  
Partner with Google and other vendors on platform capabilities  
Drive adoption of API and MCP standards across engineering teams  

What you will bring:

Required Qualifications 

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 preferred)  

Experience building developer platforms or service-oriented architectures  

Strong system design and architectural thinking skills 

Proven ability to lead cross-team technical initiatives  

Preferred Qualifications 

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 like 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 

What success looks like:

30 Days 

Assess current API and platform architecture 

Define API and MCP platform strategy  

Identify early opportunities for standardization  

60 Days 

Deliver initial platform frameworks and standards 

Begin rollout of semantic API patterns  

Establish MCP integration approach  

90 Days 

Agent-ready APIs in production 

MCP-enabled services deployed

Clear platform standards adopted across teams

Measurable improvement in API consistency and developer velocity