Web Developer

Panera Bread; St. Louis (MO); Hybrid; USD 86,000 - 103,000; Full time

Job summary

Panera Bread is seeking a front-end web developer to build new features across digital channels and collaborate with product managers, designers, and vendors. The role emphasizes high-quality, scalable code and proactive improvement in a fast-paced environment.

You will work in a hybrid setup in St. Louis, participate in technical discussions, translate requirements into actionable tasks, and help guide the team toward MVPs and robust production deployments.

Qualifications

• BS Computer Science (4-year) or higher.
• 2–4 years of front-end web development experience.
• Experience with HTML5, JS and CSS and modern front-end tooling.
• Familiar with Agile practices.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools to boost productivity.
• Experience integrating AI APIs into applications.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate feature requirements into stories and improve UX.
• Lead technical discussions, analyze requirements, and bridge design with implementation.

Skills

HTML5

JavaScript

CSS

LESS/SASS

Git

Agile

AI tools

LLM integration

REST APIs

Web accessibility

SEO

CI/CD

ADA compliance

Jenkins

Education

BS Computer Science

Tools

Webpack

NPM/Yarn

GitHub Copilot

Claude

ChatGPT integration

Job description

As a front-end web Developer at Panera, you have the opportunity of joining a company with several digital e-commerce channels, an extensive brick-and-mortar infrastructure, and endless problems to solve and optimize, but organized in such a way that every person can feel their impact on both their immediate team and the company. You will be building new and exciting features, working with 3rd party vendors, both large and small, and working with a first-class team of developers, product managers, and designers.

Additionally, the analyst position can impact the web development team by representing them in highly technical meetings, translating requirements into technical documents, and guiding the team.

Location: St. Louis, MO (hybrid)

Roles and Responsibilities

• Collaborate with team members, stakeholders, and business partners to understand feature requirements, translate them into feature stories, and enhance the user experience.
• Coordinate with the development team to manage business expectations.
• Lead technical discussions, analyze requirements, identify gaps, and evaluate solutions. Work with UI/UX designers to bridge the gap between graphical design and technical implementation.
• Manage scope and propose MVP versions to reduce time to market.
• Communicate status changes or potential deadline impacts to management.
• Work closely with QA and other developers to create and develop test cases in a pair-programming environment.
• Introduce industry standards and best practices in architecture and software engineering. Meet with cross-team architects to understand systems’ implications and propose solutions.
• Build reusable code and libraries for future use. Implement and champion good practices. Handle long-term technical debt resolutions, debt prevention, and code reviews. Face challenges head-on while advocating for best practices and process improvements.
• Regularly deploy high-quality, bug-free software to production. Prioritize and resolve bugs and defects impacting features and user experience. Handle production issue triage, management, and prevention as needed.
• Coordinate with service teams for microservice implementation and integration.
• Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies and industry trends.
• Research and develop POCs and innovative ideas for customer interactions. Engineer and integrate new technologies into the Panera ecosystem.

Job Requirements

• 2-4 years of experience in front-end web development
• BS Computer Science (4-year) or greater
• A background in software engineering is required to solve complex problems in an optimized, scalable, and maintainable manner.
• Familiarities with Agile processes and practices.
• HTML5, JS, and CSS
• Server-side CSS pre-processing platforms, such as LESS and SASS
• Code versioning tools, such as Git
• Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot) to improve engineering productivity
• Experience integrating LLMs or AI APIs (e.g., Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) into application features or workflow
• Good understanding of:
• Application bundlers such as webpack
• Package managers, such as npm or yarn
• CSS flexbox, grid layouts, and mobile responsive design
• Proficient understanding of:
• SEO principles and ensuring that the application will adhere to them.
• Web accessibility standards and best practices
• Continuous Integration and Delivery pipeline, e.g. Jenkins
• Desired attributes
• Having a relentless and continuous improvement mindset with the ability to learn new skills quickly
• Willingness to stay abreast of new technology and educate the team on the latest developments
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, high-visibility environment
• Passionate about writing clean, organized, and well-tested code and bug-prevention in production.
• Experience in test designing and creating robust automated test scripts and software to address business and technical use cases is highly desired.
• Test-driven development experience is highly desired.
• Experience in developing ADA-compliant code.
• Skills in communicating and collaborating with other teams to integrate with REST web services, middleware applications, and data models.
• Detail-oriented, efficient, and capable of working independently.

Equal Opportunity Employer: Disabled/Veterans

Competitive Pay $86,033 - $103,239 annually