Senior Principal Engineer – AI Content Systems (all genders)
Babbel · Berlin, State of Berlin
ABOUT BABBEL LABS
Babbel Labs is building the future of language learning. We are an AI-first, independent company within the Babbel group, based in Berlin. Our teams bring AI, research and product together to ship experiences that set a new standard for how people learn.
THE ROLE
We are building AI-powered content systems across the organisation, and they need a clear long-term technical strategy. This role defines and drives that strategy. It combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical impact through architecture ownership, design reviews, coaching, prototyping, and direct involvement in the most complex challenges.
This is a hands-on senior principal-level individual-contributor role with organisation-wide scope. You will own the technical direction for AI-powered content systems and lead the work across multiple teams, products, and domains. Working across AI, content, product, and platform engineering, you will define the technical vision, establish shared standards, align teams around key decisions, and ensure that AI-enabled systems are scalable, reliable, secure, and measurable in their impact on both the business and learner outcomes.
HOW YOU'LL MAKE AN IMPACT
- Define and drive the long-term technical strategy for AI-powered content systems, ensuring alignment with Babbel Labs' business objectives and product vision.
- Shape architectural direction across multiple teams and domains, making key decisions on platforms, tooling, AI infrastructure, and build-versus-buy approaches that will influence how AI capabilities are developed and scaled.
- Lead the design of robust frameworks for AI evaluation, quality measurement, governance, observability, security, and operational reliability, enabling the responsible adoption of AI across the organisation.
- Partner closely with senior leaders across Engineering, Product, Content, and Data to translate strategic priorities into executable technical roadmaps and investment decisions.
- Identify organisation-wide technical risks, dependencies, and opportunities early, helping teams navigate ambiguity and make effective long-term decisions.
- Establish engineering standards, architectural principles, and operating practices that enable multiple teams to move faster while maintaining quality, security, and reliability.
- Mentor and support Principal and Senior Engineers, raising the overall technical capability of the organisation through coaching, design reviews, and technical leadership.
- Lead and contribute to the most complex technical initiatives, remaining close enough to the technology to guide critical architectural decisions and unblock challenging technical problems when needed.
- Provide hands-on technical leadership to delivery teams by translating strategic requirements into clear technical direction, supporting work decomposition, guiding implementation, and unblocking complex delivery challenges.
- Deliver with coding agents as a matter of course, and help improve how the whole team does so.
YOUR SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS
- A strong foundation in computational linguistics, natural language processing, or applied linguistics, with the ability to contribute meaningfully to linguistic discussions and understand the role of linguistics in content creation pipelines.
- Proven success operating at Senior Principal Engineer level, or equivalent scope, within a technology organisation.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy across multiple teams, products, or business domains.
- Deep experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems and platform architectures.
- Hands-on experience designing, building, and shipping AI/ML systems into production at scale. This means direct technical contribution to model development, infrastructure, and productionisation under real product constraints, not just strategy or oversight.
- Strong understanding of AI evaluation, governance, observability, security, privacy, and operational risk management.
- A track record of leading organisation-wide technical initiatives from strategy through execution.
- Experience partnering with senior leadership to shape technical roadmaps, investment decisions, and long-term technology strategy.
- Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence across functions and levels of the organisation.
- The ability to balance long-term technical vision with pragmatic execution in fast-moving and ambiguous environments.
- Proven experience technically leading groups of engineers through execution, including requirements decomposition, technical prioritisation, implementation guidance, progress oversight, and direct coaching, while remaining an active individual contributor.
- Coding agents are part of your daily workflow, and you check their output before you rely on it. You are neither dismissive of them nor careless with them.
NICE TO HAVE
- An advanced degree or equivalent professional depth in computational linguistics, NLP, or a related linguistic discipline.
- Experience building AI-enabled content platforms, educational technology products, or knowledge systems.
- Experience with retrieval systems, RAG architectures, vector databases, agentic workflows, and modern AI application patterns.
- Experience establishing AI governance frameworks and operating models at scale.
- Experience with AWS-based architectures and modern cloud-native platforms.
- Experience helping organisations adopt AI capabilities across multiple teams and business functions.
- Deep linguistic expertise in content system design, and a strong understanding of how to ground AI-driven content creation in sound linguistic and pedagogical principles.
- Experience advising senior leadership on emerging technologies, AI strategy, and technical investments, with a strong external perspective on industry developments and best practices.
- Public technical leadership through conferences, publications, open-source contributions, or industry engagement.
WAYS OF WORKING
This is a hands-on individual-contributor role with organisation-wide scope, in a company that works agent-first. Success is measured not only by what you build directly, but by the impact you have on the technical direction, execution capability, and long-term effectiveness of multiple teams. You will work closely with senior engineering leaders, product leadership, content experts, and executive stakeholders to shape how Babbel Labs leverages AI to transform content creation and deliver meaningful business and learner outcomes. It is remote and Berlin-friendly.
DIVERSITY AT BABBEL
As part of our ongoing journey towards building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company, we welcome everyone to apply, especially individuals who are underrepresented in tech. We are a learning company, inside and out, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not fit all the technical requirements — all candidates are assessed based on skills, qualifications, and our business needs. Please state your pronouns in your application, and let us know if you'd like to be addressed by a name other than the one appearing on your official documents. If you have a disability or special need, feel welcome to inform us so we can provide proper assistance in the application process.