Contract Next Js Developer Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Senior Full-Stack Developer

Location: Elmhurst, IL

Reports To: Director of Technology 

Build solutions. Elevate performance. Thrive in Corporate at New Home Star!

New Home Star is building and scaling New Home Connect and New Home OS, internal platforms that power CRM, contests, forms, training, admin tools, and wallet/finance workflows. This is a senior role for someone who can own end-to-end delivery, improve reliability, and help us ship product without breaking mission-critical systems.

You will work in a small team with high ownership. You will touch both modern Next.js + TypeScript code and, at times, legacy backend workflows (PHP/MySQL). If you like building dashboards, debugging real-world edge cases, and making systems feel calm and predictable, you'll fit right in.

Our Corporate Support Office is located in the heart of downtown Elmhurst and is not your typical "corporate" setting. We embrace collaboration with an open office concept, and sincerely enjoy team outings, celebrations, and company-wide events. Our team is fun, ambitious, and highly motivated to succeed. These elements create a supportive environment where you can develop professionally and find a long-term place to pursue your career aspirations.

Why New Home Star?

Industry Leader: The largest privately owned new home sales company in the U.S., partnering with market-leading home builders.

Real Growth: Hands-on training, a professional development budget, and clear opportunities for advancement-all within a supportive, high-energy team led by leaders who are dedicated to your success.

Hybrid flexibility: Work remotely 3 days/week, in-person 2 days/week at our downtown Elmhurst office.

Award-Winning Culture: Supportive, high-energy team with leadership dedicated to your success, recognized in 2025 as the Best Place to Work in Real Estate and Glassdoor's Best Places to Work.

Compensation & Benefits:  Base salary range of $73,000-$88,000, biannual bonus opportunities, and a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401(k) with match, paid time off, and more.

Volunteer Opportunities: Encouraged time and financial resources to give back to your local community in meaningful ways.

What You'll Do

• Own features end-to-end across front-end, back-end, and data.
• Build and enhance internal dashboards: admin panels, role-based pages, dynamic routing, and data-heavy UIs.
• Deliver and stabilize finance-adjacent workflows (commissions, draws, cancellations, reporting integrity).
• Implement GraphQL and API integrations, plus solid client-side state and caching patterns.
• Improve reliability through better validation, logging, guardrails, and regression prevention.
• Collaborate closely with Product and stakeholders to translate messy asks into clear shipped outcomes.
• Help raise the bar on code quality and dev workflow (reviews, patterns, reusable components, Storybook).

Our Stack

• Front-end: Next.js, React, TypeScript
• UI: Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Lucide, Sonner, Recharts
• Data: Apollo Client (GraphQL), React Query, React Hook Form + Zod
• Databases: Supabase (Postgres), plus some MySQL
• Backend: Node.js services, plus legacy PHP (a plus)

How we Work

• Small team, high ownership, and direct communication.
• We care about shipping and stability. Payroll-impacting or finance workflows get extra rigor.
• We prefer clear priorities and clean tradeoffs over hero mode.

What We're Looking For

• Availability: Must work in-person two days per week in the Elmhurst, IL corporate office.
• Education: Bachelor's degree or higher preferred.
• Required Experience: 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years building production web apps with React + TypeScript.
• Strong Next.js experience shipping production features (routing, data fetching, API routes, performance basics).
• Experience building complex, data-heavy dashboards/admin tools (tables, filters, search, role-based views).
• Comfort working with GraphQL and client caching patterns (Apollo is a plus).
• Strong fundamentals in forms and validation (React Hook Form + Zod is a plus).
• Solid SQL fundamentals and comfort working with Postgres (Supabase is a plus).
• High ownership: you can take a goal, clarify scope, ship it, and support it in a real production environment.
• Additional Preferred Experience: Node.js API development, integrations, and authentication patterns.
• PHP (CodeIgniter) experience, or any meaningful legacy modernization experience.
• Supabase experience.
• Experience with role-based access, permissioned UIs, and multi-tenant systems.
• Experience improving reliability (release gating, regression testing, observability).
• Experience with Storybook and component libraries.

 What success looks like (first 60 to 90 days)

• Ramp into the codebase and ship meaningful production improvements quickly.
• Take ownership of at least one core area (admin, contests, CRM, forms, or wallet/finance flows).
• Reduce recurring support pain by adding guardrails, validation, and better visibility.
• Help us turn "whack-a-mole" issues into a calmer, repeatable delivery process.

Work Authorization & Employment Eligibility:

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States at the time of application and throughout employment. New Home Star does not provide visa sponsorship or participate in employment-based work authorization sponsorship programs. Remote employment opportunities are limited to states where New Home Star is authorized to employ team members.