Founding Frontend Software Engineer

Founding Frontend Software Engineer — Full Time

💰 $160K – $225K per annum

🚀 Start Date: ASAP

📍 Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 days/week)

🛂 Visa: Sponsorship available (H1B, TN, etc.)

About the Client:

Our client is a seed-stage startup, modernizing construction, a $12T global industry dominated by siloed, decades-old software with no APIs or mobile access. We connect these legacy systems with proprietary APIs and wrap them in modern, user-friendly interfaces that automate work and surface actionable insights.

Our mission is ambitious: unify fragmented systems, scale integrations to millions of API calls per day, and deliver reliable, cloud-based SaaS experiences where none existed before. This is a rare opportunity to shape the frontend foundations of a high-growth startup and build products used by real customers in a mission-critical space.

The Role

We’re seeking a Founding Frontend Software Engineer to lead client's product development on the frontend. This is a senior, product-minded role with high ownership over customer-facing experiences. You’ll ship new products, refactor existing code, and establish patterns and best practices that scale across the platform.

You’ll work closely with backend engineers, product managers, and the founder to translate complex workflows into thoughtful, high-performance UI. This role is frontend-heavy but requires collaboration across the full stack to deliver end-to-end solutions.

What You’ll Do:

• Build and ship frontend experiences for new products, including AP Automation and Vendor Management.
• Refactor and modernize existing frontend code to improve performance, maintainability, and developer velocity.
• Collaborate with backend engineers and product managers to translate real-world customer workflows into scalable UI.
• Establish and evolve frontend patterns, components, and best practices across the platform.

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• Own end-to-end implementation of user-facing features, from early concepts to production-ready interfaces.
• Solve complex technical challenges:
• Unification: standardize fragmented systems, data models, auth flows, and features.
• On-prem integrations: connect with legacy systems (SQL, DLL, API) securely and efficiently.
• Scale & speed: optimize APIs and frontend for millions of daily requests.
• Operational excellence: innovate scalable testing frameworks and caching layers.

Required Experience

Seniority

• 3 – 10 years building user-facing web applications with strong frontend focus.

Work Background

• Early-stage startup experience (Seed to Series C) OR top-tier mobile app companies (Duolingo, Hinge, etc.)
• Experience building customer-facing or data-intensive SaaS products.
• Full-stack experience appreciated, but role is frontend-heavy.

Technical Skills

• Modern frontend frameworks: React, TypeScript, MobX.
• Experience with large-scale, customer-facing web applications.
• Strong product sensibility and understanding of UX best practices.

Education

• Computer Science undergraduate degree (Top 25 US/Canada school preferred).

Soft Skills

• High ownership, low ego, self-motivated.
• Thrives in fast-paced startup environments.

Why This Role is Special

• Founding frontend hire: own major product surfaces and shape frontend architecture.
• Directly influence product direction, technical standards, and team practices.
• Work on complex, high-impact systems bridging legacy and modern software.
• Build scalable, mission-critical SaaS used daily by real customers.