Front End Developer Startup Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Frontend Engineering | San Francisco | In-Person

We are representing a fast-moving, early-stage technology company building a sophisticated product with complex workflows and a strong emphasis on user experience. The company is looking for a frontend engineer who can bring product judgment, design sensitivity, and technical depth to a highly iterative environment.

This is an opportunity to join a lean team where the frontend experience is central to the product's success. The ideal candidate will care deeply about speed, polish, usability, and the small details that make software feel excellent.

As Senior Frontend Developer, you will own major parts of the frontend experience for a rapidly evolving product. You will build interfaces that feel fast, intuitive, and polished, while also helping shape product direction and interaction design.

This is not a role for someone who wants to simply implement finished designs. You will be expected to prototype quickly, make thoughtful product decisions, work through ambiguity, and ship high-quality user-facing software without waiting for perfect specifications.

• Own the development of polished, high-performance frontend experiences for a complex web application.
• Build responsive, intuitive interfaces using modern frontend technologies.
• Translate rough product direction into thoughtful user flows, interaction patterns, and production-ready UI.
• Partner closely with product, design, and engineering to shape features from concept through launch.
• Care deeply about loading states, empty states, error handling, keyboard shortcuts, responsiveness, and overall product feel.
• Make smart tradeoffs around caching, refetching, optimistic updates, and network performance.
• Own features end to end when needed, including backend routes, database changes, frontend data fetching, and UI implementation.
• Help establish frontend standards, patterns, and best practices as the product and team scale.

• 4+ years of frontend engineering experience.
• Strong experience shipping complex production web applications used by real users.
• Deep React fluency, including state management, component lifecycle, callbacks, memoization, reusable components, context, and modern frontend architecture.
• Strong TypeScript experience.
• Comfort working with modern frontend tools and frameworks such as React, TanStack, Zustand, TailwindCSS, IndexedDB, and related technologies.
• Strong product and design intuition, with the ability to create excellent user experiences from incomplete or ambiguous requirements.
• A strong performance mindset and the ability to build fast, responsive interfaces.
• Full-stack comfort and willingness to own features across the frontend, backend, data layer, and UI.
• High autonomy, strong execution speed, and the ability to unblock yourself in a fast-moving environment.
• Low ego, strong collaboration skills, and a bias toward shipping, gathering feedback, and iterating.

• Experience building multiplayer or collaborative applications.
• Familiarity with technologies such as Y.js, Automerge, CRDTs, or similar collaboration frameworks.
• Experience building interfaces for AI or LLM-based tools, including streaming responses, uncertainty handling, and progressive disclosure.
• Experience with local-first architectures, including IndexedDB, service workers, sync strategies, or offline-capable applications.
• Strong visual design sense or a prior design background.
• Experience as an early or founding frontend engineer, especially in setting frontend standards from scratch.
• Exposure to serverless or edge environments such as Cloudflare Workers.

• High ownership over the frontend of an early-stage product.
• Opportunity to shape both engineering architecture and product experience.
• Work on complex workflows where frontend craft and interaction quality matter deeply.
• Join a team that values speed, taste, autonomy, and product-minded engineering.
• Build software where performance, usability, and polish are core to the user experience.
• Help define frontend standards and systems from an early stage.
• Meaningful opportunity for impact in a high-growth startup environment.

This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco.

Candidates must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting. US work authorization is required. Exceptional international candidates with O-1 eligibility may be considered.

The process may include:

• Application review, including resume and short written questions.
• Brief video introduction.
• Introductory conversation focused on motivation, location, and logistics.
• System design interview covering architecture, product thinking, and technical judgment.
• Final conversation to discuss fit and potential work trial.
• Paid in-person work trial focused on real product work.

Strong candidates may move through the process quickly.

• Meaningful early-stage equity.
• Comprehensive health and dental coverage.
• 401(k).
• Generous paid time off.
• Gym budget.
• Daily lunch.

Apply Now.

Connect with me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/perrybarrow/