Staff Front End Engineer

lower-llc; Austin (TX); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Movoto, part of the Lower family, is hiring a Senior Front-End Software Engineer to optimize performance, SSR architecture, and scalable web apps.

Work is Hybrid with 3 days in the Austin, TX office; you’ll profile apps, improve Core Web Vitals, and drive Lighthouse scores into the 90s+. Collaboration spans remote teams and product partners.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building modern, high-traffic web apps.
• Strong JS expertise with Vue.js or React.
• Experience with Node.js SSR environments.
• Proven performance optimization for large-scale apps.
• Skilled in Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, profiling.

Responsibilities

• Design and maintain high-performance Vue 3 SSR apps.
• Optimize SSR pipelines for speed and memory usage.
• Improve Core Web Vitals and TTI across large apps.
• Reduce hydration cost and refine rendering strategies.
• Tune bundle splitting, dynamic imports, and tree-shaking.
• Mentor engineers and participate in architectural decisions.

Skills

Vue.js

React

JavaScript

Node.js

SSR

Performance

Chrome DevTools

Lighthouse

Code Splitting

Caching

Tools

Vue 3

SSR frameworks

Web performance tools

CDN

Edge caching

Job description

Job Description

Movoto, part of the Lower family, is a high-scale real estate search and marketplace platform serving 5–10 million active users per month. We build fast, intuitive digital experiences that help consumers make one of life's biggest purchasing decisions, buying a home.

We’re hiring a Senior Front-End Software Engineer who thrives on performance optimization, SSR architecture, and pushing modern web applications to their limits. If you enjoy profiling apps, improving Core Web Vitals, reducing hydration cost, and driving Lighthouse scores into the 90s+.

Work Location Expectations:

Hybrid with 3 days in office per week from our Austin, TX or Columbus, OH.

What you’ll do:

Architecture & Performance

• Design and maintain high-performance Vue 3 + Server-Side Rendered (SSR) applications.
• Optimize SSR pipelines for speed, memory efficiency, and scalability.
• Improve Core Web Vitals (LCP, FCP, CLS, INP, TTFB) across large-scale web applications.
• Reduce hydration cost and improve Time to Interactive.
• Design and implement effective SSR/CSR hybrid rendering strategies.
• Optimize bundle splitting, dynamic imports, and tree-shaking.

JavaScript & Runtime Optimization

• Profile JavaScript execution using Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, WebPageTest, and real-user monitoring tools.
• Analyze flame graphs, CPU profiles, and memory snapshots to eliminate hot paths and leaks.
• Deeply understand browser rendering pipelines, event loops, microtasks vs. macrotasks.
• Optimize reactivity systems, large lists, computed properties, watchers, and composables.
• Improve Node.js SSR throughput, concurrency handling, and caching strategies.
• Implement advanced caching approaches (HTTP, CDN, in-memory, edge caching).

SEO & Rendering Strategy

• Ensure SSR output is crawlable, indexable, and structured correctly for search engines.
• Optimize structured data, meta tags, and pre-render strategies.
• Balance performance improvements with SEO and discoverability goals.
• Partner with SEO and product teams to align technical implementation with organic growth strategy.

AI-Native Engineering & Workflow

• Use AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) as part of the daily development workflow to accelerate implementation, refactoring, and debugging.
• Apply agentic and AI-native workflows to routine engineering tasks - code review prep, test generation, documentation, and performance profiling - to increase team velocity.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging AI-powered developer tooling, contributing to team standards and best practices for AI-assisted development.

Engineering Excellence & Collaboration

• Write clean, maintainable, well-tested JavaScript code.
• Participate in architectural discussions and technical decision-making.
• Perform thoughtful code reviews and help raise the quality bar.
• Mentor mid-level and junior engineers on performance and front-end best practices.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, backend engineers, and SEO specialists - many of whom are on remote and distributed teams - using async-friendly communication (written specs, recorded walkthroughs, thorough PR descriptions) alongside live collaboration.
• Contribute to a culture that values ownership, learning, and continuous improvement.

Who you are:

• 5+ years of professional experience building modern, high-traffic web applications
• Strong expertise in JavaScript and Vue.js or React experience.
• Comfortable working with Node.js, particularly in server-side rendering (SSR) environments.
• Proven experience optimizing performance for large-scale consumer applications (millions of users).
• Hands-on experience improving Core Web Vitals (LCP, FCP, CLS, INP, TTFB).
• Strong experience using Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, memory profiling, and flame graph analysis.
• Deep understanding of rendering strategies, hydration cost, code splitting, and tree shaking.
• Strong knowledge of browser rendering lifecycle, Virtual DOM performance, and reactivity systems.
• Experience implementing CDN, caching, and asset optimization strategies.
• Strong understanding of SEO implications related to SSR and rendering decisions.
• Experience building maintainable systems supported by automated tests.
• Hands-on experience with AI-native/AI-assisted engineering workflows (e.g., AI coding assistants, agentic dev tools) in a professional setting.
• Proven experience working effectively on remote and/or distributed teams, including async collaboration across time zones.
• Excellent communication skills with a collaborative, ownership-driven mindset.

Nice to have:

• Experience in real estate, marketplaces, or other high-scale consumer platforms
• Experience tuning Node.js performance in production environments
• Familiarity with edge computing or CDN configuration