Lead Front End Software Engineer

Lead Front End Software Engineer

Location: New York, NY

Salary: $240,000-$285,000 (base) + Equity

Work Model: Hybrid, 3 days per week onsite

About the Role

We are seeking a Lead Front End Software Engineer to drive the development of intuitive, high-performance user experiences while helping shape the technical direction of our product. This is a hands-on leadership opportunity for an experienced engineer who combines deep frontend expertise with strong architectural judgment, a passion for product quality, and the ability to elevate the engineers around them.

You will play a key role in defining how our applications are designed, developed, tested, and maintained as the business grows. Working closely with engineering, product, and design, you will translate complex requirements into polished, scalable interfaces while contributing to broader technical decisions across the platform.

What You'll Do

• Lead frontend architecture and implementation, establishing scalable patterns and engineering standards that support long-term product development.
• Drive the evolution of our user interface, ensuring applications are responsive, accessible, reliable, and intuitive across devices and platforms.
• Partner with product managers and designers to turn business objectives and user needs into thoughtful technical solutions.
• Develop and maintain reusable components, shared UI libraries, and design system foundations that improve consistency and accelerate development.
• Improve frontend quality through effective testing strategies, performance monitoring, error tracking, and continuous optimization.
• Take ownership of complex technical initiatives from initial design through deployment, identifying risks and making sound architectural decisions along the way.
• Collaborate across the stack when necessary, contributing to APIs, backend services, integrations, and infrastructure-related challenges.
• Promote secure, reliable, and maintainable software practices throughout the development lifecycle.
• Mentor engineers, provide constructive technical feedback, and help establish a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and AI-assisted development tools to identify opportunities to improve engineering efficiency and software quality.

What We're Looking For

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including substantial experience delivering production-grade frontend applications.
• Advanced proficiency with React and TypeScript, with a strong understanding of modern frontend architecture and application design.
• Experience leading the technical delivery of significant frontend projects, including making architectural decisions and coordinating implementation across contributors.
• Strong understanding of UI/UX principles, component-driven development, responsive design, accessibility, and frontend performance optimization.
• Experience building or maintaining reusable component libraries, design systems, or shared frontend infrastructure.
• Familiarity with automated testing, CI/CD workflows, production monitoring, and debugging complex application issues.
• Ability to work beyond the frontend when needed, with an understanding of APIs, backend architecture, integrations, and distributed application environments.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly to both engineering peers and cross-functional stakeholders.
• A proactive approach to ownership, with the judgment to balance immediate product needs against long-term technical maintainability.
• A collaborative leadership style, with an interest in mentoring engineers, raising technical standards, and helping a growing team succeed.
• Curiosity about new frameworks, development methodologies, and AI-powered coding tools, with the ability to assess their practical value rather than follow trends.

Nice to Have

• Experience working with Python or other backend languages.
• Exposure to mobile application development or shared web and mobile frontend architectures.
• Experience scaling frontend systems within a growing startup or fast-moving product organization.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, observability platforms, and production operations.
• Experience introducing AI-assisted engineering workflows into an existing software development process.