Director, Engineering - Avalara Developer Experience Platform

Avalara is a leading company in cloud compliance solutions, seeking a Director of Engineering for their Developer Experience Platform. This role focuses on enhancing the external developer experience, managing documentation, and facilitating integration with Avalara’s products through innovative tools and AI-powered solutions.

Responsibilities:

• 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)
• 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
• Provide API exploration, testing, and simulation environments
• Enable safe experimentation for developers and agents (mock + sandbox)
• Build and maintain reference implementations and starter kits
• Deliver agent-ready examples, prompts, and integration patterns
• Define and promote 'golden paths' for common integrations
• 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
• 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
• Lead developer onboarding and partner integration journeys
• Support strategic partners with co-build and acceleration frameworks
• Improve integration success rates across the ecosystem
• 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

Requirements:

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