Staff Frontend Engineer

Engg; Greater London; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Motorway is looking for a Staff Frontend Engineer to lead technically across our frontend engineering. You will work with cross-functional squads, owning features end to end and driving migrations across our TS/React/Next.js stack.

You will shape product strategy with a technically grounded, commercially aware perspective, and define AI‑enabled development standards using Kiro and related tools. You will collaborate with engineers, designers, data analysts and product managers in a fast-growing

Qualifications

• 5+ years focused frontend practice building and operating production web applications at scale.
• Ability to bridge engineering and product priorities and defend technical decisions under uncertainty.
• Recognised as a technical authority in frontend engineering; your judgement shapes decisions beyond your team.
• Deep expertise with modern CSS/SCSS, HTML, and ECMAScript proposals and framework trade-offs.
• Experience writing unit and E2E tests and building CI workflows to exercise them.
• Deep knowledge of TypeScript and modern React (hooks, SSR with Next.js).
• Experience with observability, Core Web Vitals, accessibility auditing, and frontend performance tuning.

Responsibilities

• Ship features end to end: own product work from design handoff to production.
• Author and own API contracts and department documentation, with a rigorous roadmap.
• Drive consistency across web properties and lead migrations using new framework features.
• Set security, web performance, and reliability standards for frontend systems.
• Own the build and deployment story, choosing hosting and build vs buy trade-offs.
• Develop IC3 engineers into technical leaders and raise the technical bar in hiring.
• Lead AI-assisted development using AI tools and define integration standards.

Skills

Frontend leadership

TypeScript

React

CSS/SCSS

Next.js

Performance tuning

Testing

Tools

Vitest

Chromatic

CI pipelines

Job description

ABOUT MOTORWAY

Motorway is the UK's largest online car-selling platform. We connect private sellers directly with over 8,000 dealers nationwide. Our online platform helps sellers achieve great prices for their cars while giving dealers fast, reliable access to the stock they want for their dealerships. Founded in 2017, our award-winning, technology‑led approach has redefined the experience of selling a car. Motorway is backed by some of the world’s leading technology investors, having raised £143 million in Series C funding. This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing scale‑up at a crucial phase of growth and help change an industry for the better. We're looking for a Staff Frontend Engineer to help lead technically across our frontend engineering. You'll work across a group of cross‑functional squads, each made up of engineers, designers, data analysts and a product manager, helping them move quickly and safely, resolving the engineering problems that span teams before they compound into systemic risk, and shaping product and business strategy with a technically‑grounded, commercially‑aware point of view. We're a TypeScript-first organisation. Our frontend stack is TypeScript and React, styled with SCSS, server‑side rendered with Next.js and Express, and tested with Vitest & Chromatic. As a Staff engineer you'll bring deep expertise with the latest native web technologies and modern frameworks, drive consistency across all of our web properties, and lead the migration efforts that keep our stack current, not just bumping versions, but making use of the new capabilities each release brings and helping the wider department do the same. At Motorway, we know the importance of delivering high-quality, valuable solutions quickly, and we recognise the ability for AI tools and agents to accelerate our work. We provide our engineers with access to the latest models through Kiro. As a Staff engineer you'll define and lead our AI engineering practice on the frontend, setting standards for agent execution environments, quality harnesses, and guardrail architecture - and build a team norm where domain depth, AI‑enabled breadth, and rigorous feedback-loop design are treated as complementary.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING

• Ship features end to end: Own meaningful pieces of product work from design handoff through to production, building accessible, performant components, wiring them into applications, and shipping them with confidence.
• Author the contracts and the roadmap: Author and own API contracts and documentation for the department, and maintain a technical roadmap with rigorous written framing - precise intent, explicit trade‑offs, and unambiguous success criteria - setting the documentation and spec‑writing standard for the area.
• Drive consistency and lead migrations: Drive consistency across all our web properties, design the standards the department builds on, and lead migration efforts - making full use of new framework features and bringing the rest of engineering along with you.
• Own quality, security, performance and reliability standards: Set and maintain the security & web performance standards for the frontend, including client‑side concerns like CSP, CWV, XSS prevention, data, governance plus reliability standards, incident review culture, and production readiness criteria.
• Own the build and deployment story: Understand the build and deployment pipeline for our assets and services end to end, monitor and improve it, and make informed, commercially‑aware decisions about hosting providers, vendors, and build‑vs‑buy trade‑offs.
• Develop other engineers: Develop IC3 engineers into technical leaders, raise the technical bar in hiring by defining what “good” looks like in the discipline, and build a culture of ownership, accountability, and high standards.
• Lead AI‑assisted engineering: Use Kiro and other AI tools to move faster, and set the standards for how the team integrates AI into its everyday workflow and its products.

WHAT YOU’LL HAVE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• At least 5+ years of experience in focused frontend practice building and operating production web applications at scale, with a track record of leading large, complex projects.
• The ability to bridge engineering and product fluently, translating between business priorities and technical constraints in both directions, and to make and defend difficult technical decisions under uncertainty through reasoning, not authority.
• Recognised as a technical authority in frontend engineering - engineers and product stakeholders seek you out for technical direction, and your judgement shapes decisions beyond your immediate team.
• Deep expertise with modern CSS/SCSS, HTML, and current ECMAScript proposals, and a strong understanding of the trade‑offs between different frameworks and the scenarios in which each is the right choice.
• Comprehensive experience writing unit and E2E tests, and building the CI workflows to exercise them.
• Deep working knowledge of TypeScript and modern React (hooks, component composition, transitions), and of frameworks like Next.js that handle SSR, routing, and data fetching.
• Deep experience with observability, Core Web Vitals, accessibility auditing, and frontend performance tuning - and the ability to evaluate new frameworks and identify where we gain an edge in development, deployment, rendering, integration, and performance.
• Breadth across different teams, and the judgement to make pragmatic build‑vs‑refactor‑vs‑replace calls informed by a track record of production crises and scale challenges.
• A genuine interest in leading AI‑assisted development as part of your and the team’s workflow.

ADDITIONAL OR PREFERRED REQUIREMENTS

• Experience owning and maintaining a design system, and driving its adoption across multiple teams.
• The ability to create sensible UI designs without a Designer for non‑trivial (though not highly complex) work when the team is resource‑constrained.
• Experience evalu