Principal Frontend Developer

djr; Manchester; Remote; GBP 110,700 - 129,150; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology consultancy in the UK seeks a Principal Frontend Engineer for a contract role. This hands-on position requires expertise in React and modern frontend systems, contributing to a greenfield cloud-native platform. The ideal candidate will lead teams, design micro-frontend architectures, and champion engineering best practices. This contract offers a duration of 3-6 months with potential extensions, operating in a fast-moving environment with genuine influence over technology choices.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a Principal / Lead Engineer in modern frontend systems.
• Deep hands-on experience with React at enterprise scale.
• Strong understanding of micro-frontends and distributed architectures.

Responsibilities

• Acting as a hands-on technical leader within a senior engineering team.
• Designing and evolving micro-frontend architectures using React.
• Championing engineering best practices, performance, security, and scalability.

Skills

Hands-on leadership

Micro-frontend architecture

React

GraphQL

AWS

DevOps practices

Tools

Terraform

Docker

GitHub Actions

Job description

Head of Contract Solutions

djr | Building the best Interim Information Technology Teams

Principal Frontend Engineer (Contract)

We’re supporting a large, complex enterprise technology organisation as they build a greenfield Connected Platform that will underpin their digital estate for the next decade.

This is a hands-on Principal Engineer role where you’ll set technical direction, lead by example, and help shape modern frontend architecture at scale.

The Opportunity

You’ll join a newly formed product engineering team working on a cloud-native platform that provides a single access point across multiple enterprise systems. The focus is on modern frontend engineering, micro-frontends, event-driven architecture, and real-time data.

This is not a legacy rescue job, it’s a from-scratch build, with genuine influence over technology choices and engineering standards.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Acting as a hands-on technical leader within a senior engineering team
• Designing and evolving micro-frontend architectures using React
• Working closely with architecture, product, data and platform teams
• Contributing across the stack where required (GraphQL, .NET, AWS)
• Championing engineering best practice, performance, security and scalability
• Supporting real-time, event-driven systems and highly decoupled services
• Mentoring engineers and raising the technical bar across the team

Tech Environment

• Frontend: React, Micro-frontends, GraphQL
• Cloud: AWS (EKS, ECS, Lambda, MSK, EventBridge, SNS/SQS)
• IaC & DevOps: Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions

What We’re Looking For

• Proven experience as a Principal / Lead Engineer in modern frontend systems
• Deep hands-on React experience, ideally at enterprise scale
• Strong understanding of micro-frontends and distributed architectures
• Experience working in cloud-native, AWS-based environments
• Comfortable operating in greenfield, fast-moving product teams
• Confident influencing technical direction without formal line management
• IR35: Inside
• Duration: 3-6 months+

Seniority level

• Not Applicable

Employment type

• Contract

Job function

• Information Technology