Director, Engineering - Avalara Developer Experience Platform

Role Description

We are seeking a Director/Sr. Director to lead Avalara’s Agentic Developer Experience (DX) Platform — focused on enabling developers and AI agents to seamlessly discover, understand, and integrate with Avalara’s products. This role owns the external developer experience layer, including:

• Exposing documentation for agent-facing interfaces (e.g., MCP)
• Documentation and knowledge systems
• Interactive tooling
• AI-powered integration accelerators

You will partner closely with domain-focused product engineering who own APIs, MCP tools, backend systems, and the partner engineering team, ensuring these capabilities are exposed in a consistent, intuitive, and agent-friendly manner for developers and partners.

Responsibilities

• Agent Experience Layer
  • Build and evolve the external MCP-based interface and tool catalog for building integrations
  • Standardize how APIs and capabilities are exposed to AI agents
  • Define best practices for agent-tool interactions (schemas, patterns, guardrails)
• Developer Portal & Knowledge Experience
  • Own the developer documentation platform, IA, and UX
  • Ensure documentation freshness and accuracy via automation (spec ↔ docs sync, drift detection)
  • Deliver task-oriented, cross-product integration guides
• Interactive Sandbox & Exploration
  • Provide API exploration, testing, and simulation environments
  • Enable safe experimentation for developers and agents (mock + sandbox)
• Sample Apps & AI Integration Kits
  • Build and maintain reference implementations and starter kits
  • Deliver agent-ready examples, prompts, and integration patterns
  • Define and promote “golden paths” for common integrations
• Integration Acceleration (AI-first)
  • Develop AI-powered tools and workflows that reduce time-to-integration
  • Create reusable “skills” for common use cases (e.g., tax calculation flows)
  • Enable partners to build faster using AI-assisted approaches
• DX Standards & Cross-Team Alignment
  • Define and drive adoption of API, MCP, and documentation standards
  • Partner with product teams to ensure consistent external experience
  • Establish versioning, deprecation, and usability guidelines
• Partner Enablement & Ecosystem Growth
  • Lead developer onboarding and partner integration journeys
  • Support strategic partners with co-build and acceleration frameworks
  • Improve integration success rates across the ecosystem
• Observability & Continuous Improvement
  • Define and track DX metrics (time-to-first-success, integration success rate, agent task completion)
  • Build feedback loops from usage, errors, and developer input
  • Continuously improve experience based on real-world signals

Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
• 12+ years of relevant experience in developer platforms, APIs, or DX leadership roles

Requirements

• Experience leading developer platforms or DX initiatives at scale
• Experience building external platforms or partner ecosystems
• Proven ability to influence across teams
• Experience defining and driving platform standards

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Deep understanding of API design and developer workflows
• Demonstrated experience with AI/LLM or agent-based systems
• Strong data-driven mindset
• Strong product and platform thinking
• Proven ability to influence across teams without direct ownership
• Curiosity that uncovers opportunities where none seemingly exist
• Customer obsession that inspires product engineering teams to reduce debt and backlog and improve overall consistency
• Hands-on leadership mindset
• Roll-up-your-sleeves mindset with willingness to leverage the latest tools, demonstrate how things should be done, and raise the bar for your team and peers

Benefits

• In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses
• Health & Wellness benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance
• Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture
• We have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship