How to Write a Front End Developer Job Description

It may be fair to say that no other discipline has had as much influence on the modern digital landscape as Front End Developers. Just about everything you see, click or interact with on a website or application is the result of a Front Developer. Front End Devs must blend the technical skill set of a software engineer with the design and UX chops of a seasoned designer, and getting it right is no small feat.

Given the importance of the visual interfaces that users interact with every day, most businesses choose to hire dedicated experts that specialize in this work. But with billions of websites and apps out there, the competition for this skill set is fierce. This article will walk you through everything you need to write a great Front End Developer job description. 

 

What Does a Front End Developer Do?

Front End Developers code the front end (i.e., the visual portion) of a website or app. Think of a Front End Developer as the bridge between the designers who determine what the product will look like and the Back End Developers who develop the behind-the-scenes technology that makes everything work. Front End Developers ensure that the product meets technical requirements while providing a user friendly (and beautiful) experience. To do so, they utilize three primary languages:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

When it comes to JavaScript, Front End Developers work with a number of libraries and frameworks that streamline the process. There are dozens of these libraries and frameworks, so work with your hiring manager to determine requirements and then do a little reading to ensure you have a basic understanding of the subject matter before writing the job description.

A Front End Developer must bring a wealth of technical expertise to the table, but the job also requires a host of softer skills. Front End Developers must be able to effectively collaborate with colleagues in numerous departments, make recommendations that directly impact products and mentor fellow developers as they advance in their career.

 

Front End Developer Job Description Examples

Understanding what a Front End Developer does is critical when trying to write an effective job description, but sometimes you still need a little inspiration. We have you covered with five examples. These are real job descriptions that we sourced from our seven local online communities, though we have redacted some information to protect the privacy of the companies that originally posted these job descriptions.

 

Front End Developer Job Description: Example 1

As the Lead Frontend Engineer at [Redacted], you will lead a team of engineers to ship delightful experiences to every customer and potential customer to visit [Redacted]’s site. We expect that you will be both mentor and team leader for your engineers. This means that you will help with technical decisions, coach the engineers reporting to you, and partner with stakeholders cross-functionally - and you will definitely be writing code. On a typical day, you can expect to to coach engineers to level up their technical and soft skills, to plan and scope future projects, and to help fix a small bug or guide a new feature development.

If you're an experienced engineering lead with extensive knowledge about Frontend Web development, who also has a passion for building delightful user experiences, join us!

What you'll do:

• Develop delightful user-facing features
• Build modular layouts, reusable code and libraries for future use
• Create and maintain automated tests to ensure quality and save time and money
• Ensure the technical feasibility of UI/UX designs
• Help set technical standards and best practices for the front end team
• Optimize application for maximum speed and scalability
• Collaborate with other team members and stakeholders

When you join us you'll bring:

• Experience - You've been working in a fast paced consumer company, leading a team of high performing engineers.
• Expert in web markup, including HTML5, CSS3 and javascript
• Expert understanding of client-side scripting and javascript frameworks such as jquery and React
• Proficient understanding of server-side CSS pre-processing platforms, such as LESS and SASS (we like SASS)
• Proficient understanding of javascript pre-processing and packaging frameworks such as babel and webpack
• Good understanding of PHP and some full stack experience. While you’ll be spending most of your time in the V of MVC, we’ll occasionally need help further back in the stack
• Good understanding of SEO principles including web analytics and ensuring that application will adhere to them
• Excellent communication skills and experience in collaborative environments
• The desire to be continually learning about emerging technologies/industry trends

This role is perfect for you if:

• You enjoy the challenge of leading complex technical projects and delivering iterative solutions that provide value each step of the way.
• You enjoy working closely with partners across the business and within your team to solve problems.
• You’re a great communicator who knows how to organize a team around discovering and delivering solutions, facilitate meaningful discussions, and build consensus.
• You love mentoring engineers and helping them progress on their career path.

 

Front End Developer Job Description: Example 2

Have you been writing beautiful web UIs for as long as you can remember? Are you excited about the rapid evolution of browser apps? Do typical shallow web opportunities out there leave you wanting for more?

We’re on a mission to bring sanity to Dev & Ops, and we need you to engineer engaging and usable UIs to effortlessly explore large amounts of data, and to help our users understand their infrastructure through interactive visualizations.

What you will do

• Transform large and complex datasets to beautiful visualizations
• Implement compelling, usable UIs; contribute to their design; and engineer them with React and Redux
• Join a tightly knit team solving hard problems the right way
• Improve performance and address scalability limits
• Own meaningful parts of our service, have an impact, grow with the company

What we're looking for

• You have been designing and engineering UIs for several years
• You’re a master of Javascript, HTML, and CSS and you’re aware of the latest trends with frontend technologies
• You know how to use design patterns to create simple and reusable components for complex UIs
• You are familiar with data structures and algorithms, profiling and optimization
• Your work or portfolio is visible online
• You value code simplicity, performance and details
• You want to work in a fast, high growth startup environment that respects its engineers and customers

Bonus points

• You fell in love with D3 (we did)
• You’ve worked on a large application using React, Angular, Backbone, Ember, Flux, or Redux
• You write your Javascript in ES6 and Babel
• You enjoy writing Python, Ruby, C++, Rust or Go

 

Front End Developer Job Description: Example 3

The Engineering Team is on a mission to build the absolute best software in the local space. We use our data and technology to effectively create and manage local business owners’ digital assets at scale. While our customers are hard at work realizing their passion and dream, our software delivers:.

• A compelling digital experience that matches the authenticity and spirit of that local business to their consumers. We help consumers find their next favorite local business or love the current one even more.
• Data-driven insights about their consumers and their business -- insights they can use to compete with big businesses and thrive.
• A content platform that empowers our content managers to create engaging content while having fun using the tools.

In addition to the top notch engineering talent we have on the team, we also have the best partners -- incredible Product and Design Teams!

As a Front-End Engineer at [Redacted], you will:

• Write gobs of code – we don’t know any other way to hone our craft better!
• Solve technical problems that few have solved before – no one else helps local businesses the way we do.
• Participate in the decision-making process – we want you to Speak Up.
• Mentor junior software engineers -- it’s the best way to collaborate and innovate.
• Take on the challenge of making what you build higher-quality, faster, and more scalable.
• Have a direct impact on the company’s top line performance.

Qualifications:

• At least 5+ years of experience developing front end web applications.
• Deep knowledge and a passion for coding standards, especially HTML5, CSS / CSS3, and Javascript.
• Knowledge of current trends and best practices in front-end architecture, including performance optimization, accessibility, and usability.
• Extensive experience in responsive web design and development.
• Experience incorporating analytics instrumentation and enabling A/B testing.
• Ability to design and implement highly scalable applications with a passion for the user experience.
• A self-driven and conscientious mentality and a commitment to innovate with high- quality work.

 

Front End Developer Job Description: Example 4

[Redacted] is looking for a Senior Frontend Engineer who is motivated to excel in advanced client-side technologies. Responsibilities will include designing modern interfaces using latest JavaScript based architecture and deploying the product to [Redacted]'s cloud infrastructure. You will work with the Product Managers to understand customer requirements and drive UI/UX Designers and Developers to implement features.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work with Product Managers to define product requirements
• Collaborate with UX/UI Designers to build modern interfaces
• Design scalable client-side architecture that works with a multi-tenant cloud API
• Ensure secure coding standards to protect the clients against various vulnerabilities
• Build reusable code and libraries for future use
• Optimize application for maximum speed and scalability
• Mentor junior team members and review their code

Desired Skills:

• 8+ years of hands-on experience in building scalable client-side products
• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science or in a related field
• Expert proficiency in JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular 2+
• Solid experience in using complex REST API from client-side
• In-depth understanding of web standards & markup including HTML5 & CSS3, asynchronous request handling, cross-browser compatibility, modern security standards etc
• Expert level knowledge and practical experience in client-side build/config management and testing tools like Webpack, Jasmine, Karma etc
• Exposure to Continuous Integration/Delivery pipeline for cloud including Jenkins, Sonar, Docker etc. would be a solid plus
• Exposure to full-stack development is a plus
• Working within cross-functional engineering teams as well as peer teams in building an integrated solution
• Experience with software engineering best practices (e.g. unit testing, code reviews, design documentation) and related tools like GitHub, JIRA
• Excellent communication, documentation and presentation skills for technical and business audiences
• Team leadership and mentoring skills; recent work in driving small teams using Agile Scrum development process; past experience in owning products or components

 

Front End Developer Job Description: Example 5

If you are a talented engineer who thrives in a fast-growing environment, and if you are passionate about building highly scalable systems with intuitive experience that users will love, we’d love to talk to you. At [Redacted], every engineer is responsible for delivering high-quality code and shaping the next stage of evolution in payments and financial services. Join us to learn and grow together and make a real difference.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, design and develop critical features and components
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and designers to create and build beautiful apps and experiences
• Identify and select the right tools and frameworks for the job
• Collaborate across the organization to build and evolve platform and application capabilities with the technical vision and product and business needs
• Implement automated testing suite for functional and performance testing
• Be an owner and a champion of user experience

Skills & Competencies Required:

• Experience building modern JavaScript applications using frameworks such as Angular and React
• Strong UX and design sensibilities and a desire to perfect the details
• Proficiency with HTML5, CSS3, and build systems such as Gulp and Webpack
• Experience working with RESTful APIs
• Experience working with cloud-based infrastructure using AWS
• Experience in financial services, payments, processing, and/or small and medium businesses is a plus
• BS in Computer Science or Engineering or related discipline or equivalent work experience

 

Front End Developer Job Description Template

As you can see, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to hiring a Front End Developer. There are, however, plenty of commonalities that we can lean on to start crafting the perfect Front End Developer job description. We’ve taken some of the best elements from the job description samples we examined and created the following template. Please note that this template is intended as a jump off point to get you started. Make sure to customize it to your needs.

Company Bio
[Use this section to provide an attention grabbing overview of your company. Include information about your culture, perks and benefits, career development opportunities and anything else that will get candidates excited about your company.]

Job Description

We are looking for a Front End Developer to join our engineering team. You will work with a tight-knit team of engineers, designers and product managers and bring a passion for user experience as well as meticulous attention to detail in order to build intuitive and elegant user experiences. You will have the opportunity to work with the latest tools, including [list your tech stack here]. You will play a key role in guiding our tech stack and will actively mentor your fellow developers.

Responsibilities:

• Create high quality and enjoyable user experiences by building interfaces that are simple, intuitive, performant and reliable.
• Build, test and ship user-facing features in modern tools like [insert your tech stack here].
• Build and maintain reusable code and libraries for future use.
• Help guide our front end stack by identifying and selecting the right tools and frameworks for the job.
• Assist in documenting, debugging, evaluating, and unit testing projects.
• Mentor and pair-program with junior software engineers and other teams.
• Participate in the decision-making process.
• Stay up to date on the latest of front end engineering

Requirements

• You have at least [desired number of years] experience in front end web development.
• You have at least [desired number of years] experience working with [input desired languages, libraries or frameworks here].
• You have experience working collaboratively with product managers and designers.
• You are able to communicate technical subject matter to a non-technical audience in an understandable and impactful manner.
• You are comfortable making recommendations to a senior level audience.
• You have meticulous attention to detail.
• [Insert desired level of education here.]

 

Front End Developer Salary Information

Front End Developers serve a critical function, and qualified candidates command a pretty penny on the open market. We aggregated data from our seven local online communities to develop a comprehensive overview of Front End Developer salary data, so when you find the right candidate you’ll know what to offer.  

• Austin, TX: $85,278
• Boston, MA: $93,188
• Chicago, IL: $94,302
• Colorado: $77,132
• Los Angeles, CA: $90,710
• New York, NY: $109,000
• Seattle, WA: $97,962

Cross-Market Average Salary for Front End Developers: $92,510