About the role

Technical lead for frontend engineering at Alpaca, focusing on user experience and frontend architecture. Collaborating with teams to drive innovation and reduce technical debt while enhancing performance.

Responsibilities

Act as a long-term technical steward for Alpaca’s frontend architecture (2–5 year horizon).
Design and evolve scalable frontend patterns for data fetching, state management, performance, and runtime configuration.
Drive large-scale initiatives such as:
• Design system evolution and adoption
• Frontend platform standardization
• Performance, reliability, and developer-experience improvements.
Identify and reduce systemic frontend technical debt with measurable business impact.
Lead cross-team, multi-quarter initiatives spanning multiple product areas.
Define rollout strategies that enable change without blocking feature delivery (e.g. phased migrations, feature flags, compatibility layers).
Partner with backend and platform teams to solve end-to-end system problems, not just frontend symptoms.
Influence engineers and leaders across the broader engineering organization.
Write RFCs, decision records, and architectural proposals that align teams and drive adoption.
Mentor Senior Engineers and help raise the overall frontend engineering bar.
Navigate conflicting opinions and help teams disagree and commit.
Take loosely defined business problems and turn them into clear, actionable technical initiatives.
Manage risk in large migrations, architectural shifts, and platform-level changes.
Balance short-term delivery with long-term sustainability, even when ROI is not immediately visible.

Extensive experience building and scaling modern frontend applications (React + TypeScript or similar).
Proven track record operating at Staff or equivalent level, with impact across multiple teams or domains.
Strong understanding of frontend architecture at scale, including:
• Data-fetching patterns
• Performance optimization
• Design systems
• Runtime configuration
• Observability and reliability.
Experience leading large technical initiatives from problem definition through adoption.
7+ years of professional experience in frontend development.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
Ability to translate product mockups and designs into fully realised user interfaces.
Strong proficiency with:
• TypeScript and React
• HTML and CSS (e.g. TailwindCSS).
Passion for creating intuitive, high-performance user interfaces.
Experience working with REST APIs and WebSocket best practices.
Track record of setting or influencing frontend best practices.
Strong attention to detail and appreciation for design quality and aesthetics.