Senior Principal Engineer - AI Content Systems

About the role

Babbel Labs is building the future of language learning as an AI-first, independent company within the Babbel group, based in Berlin. The Senior Principal Engineer - AI Content Systems will own the technical direction for AI-powered content systems across the organisation, shaping how AI, content, product, and platform engineering work together. This role combines strategic leadership with hands-on technical impact through architecture ownership, design reviews, coaching, prototyping, and direct involvement in the most complex challenges. 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.

Key facts

What you'll do

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 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 responsible AI adoption 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 allow 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.

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.

Champion the definition, implementation, and continuous improvement of content system workflows that integrate AI capabilities with linguistic expertise and product requirements.

Drive the establishment of cross-functional alignment on data, evaluation metrics, and operational practices that enable scalable and safe AI content production.

Collaborate with product and content teams to ensure that AI systems support effective learning experiences and measurable learner outcomes.

Influence broader industry and open-source strategies where relevant, contributing to the credibility and technical depth of Babbel Labs in AI and language education.

Requirements

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, including direct technical contribution to model development, infrastructure, and productionisation under real product constraints.

Strong understanding of AI evaluation, governance, observability, security, privacy, and operational risk management.

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.

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.

Nice to have

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, semantic methods, and evaluation approaches relevant to language learning and content generation.

Practical notes

This is a full-time position based in Berlin.

The listed requirements are mandatory and must be met in full.

Only the information in this job page is authoritative for this role at Babbel.bio.