Principal Frontend Engineer

Principal Frontend Engineer

San Francisco

About Arena Club

If you're fascinated by sports cards and memorabilia, your search ends here. Arena Club is pioneering the collectibles domain by introducing the first-ever digital card show. Spearheaded by 5x World Series Champion Derek Jeter and serial entrepreneur Brian Lee, Arena Club has developed a fully digital marketplace. This innovative platform is built on trust, transparency, and fun, featuring grading & authentication, vaulting, and digital pack openings for collectors to build and showcase their collections in a personalized online showroom from anywhere in the world.

About The Role

We are seeking a Principal Frontend Engineer who blends architectural vision with hands-on execution. You'll set the direction for how we build, scale, and evolve the frontend across our products — from the design system and performance strategy to how teams ship reliable, elegant interfaces. You're equally comfortable mapping out the big picture as you are diving into a complex React component or debugging TypeScript code. You'll serve as a technical leader and mentor, helping other engineers level up while owning your own initiatives from concept to production.

What You Will Do

• Drive the architecture, design, and implementation of Arena's web applications using React and TypeScript
• Set technical direction for frontend systems and frameworks that scale across multiple products and teams
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Backend Engineering to define elegant, performant user experiences
• Lead complex initiatives from concept to launch — balancing long-term architectural vision with short-term delivery needs
• Build and maintain robust design systems, shared components, and standards that ensure consistency and speed
• Raise the engineering bar by mentoring teammates, conducting thoughtful code reviews, and establishing best practices
• Champion performance, accessibility, and reliability as core pillars of our web platform
• Identify and resolve architectural bottlenecks, ensuring high-quality, maintainable code at scale

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
• 8+ years of experience in frontend web development, with deep expertise in React and TypeScript
• 3+ years of experience leading or architecting web development projects or teams
• Strong understanding of modern web application architecture, state management (Redux, MobX, or similar), and build tools (Webpack, Babel, Vite, etc.)
• Proven track record of designing, implementing, and deploying production-grade web applications end-to-end
• Experience with automated testing, continuous integration, and modern DevOps workflows
• Hands-on experience using AI tools (Claude or Cursor preferred; other agentic tools welcome) to ship code, build agents, and automate workflows
• Skilled in balancing speed and quality — making informed tradeoffs while maintaining technical excellence
• Bonus: familiarity with cloud environments, API design, and performance monitoring tools

The Arena Club Standard

Life at Arena Club isn't for the faint of heart — and that's by design. We're building products and experiences the collectibles world has never seen. This is a proving ground. It demands your best every single day, because anything less means you're falling behind.

From day one, you're in the game. Trusted to deliver, expected to own outcomes, and driven to raise the bar higher than you thought possible. We don't just execute — we innovate, compete, and win together.

If you want routine or predictability, you won't find it here. But if you're ambitious, relentless, and hungry to prove yourself on a team built to dominate — step into the arena. You'll discover growth and reward here, unlike anywhere else.

The base salary range listed is a guideline. Actual compensation is determined based on skills, experience, and the impact you bring. Total compensation includes base salary, bonus, and equity.

Salary Range

$175,000 - $250,000 USD