Staff Frontend Engineer

SimpleStudy is a consumer AI platform for students.
We help them stay motivated to study their subjects - everything from Biology and Mathematics to Literature and Art.
Our small team has already helped +1.5 M students worldwide (UK, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia) study better, and ~40–50k new students join us every week.
We are a remote team with a Lisbon office, having recently raised ~$4M seed round with incredible investors from Strava, OpenAI, and Meta.

Engineering is strong, anchored by Affan as an excellent engineering manager, with skills spread across the stack. There's no dedicated mobile specialist, but two strong engineers are available to help build out the React Native app. Oisin (founder) is directly involved with the team and currently leads product while Affan drives engineering. This new hire would be a senior/staff-level engineer working directly with Affan and Oisin, expected to set a bar for craft and product sensibility across the team.

• Own features end-to-end — from ambiguous problem to shipped, polished product — without needing every spec handed to you

• Work full-stack across the codebase, with a particular eye for the details that make a product feel good: motion, micro-interactions, pixel-level polish

• Partner directly with Affan and the engineering team, and with Oisin on product direction where design and engineering intersect

• Help build out the React Native mobile app alongside the two existing resources if needed.

• Ship fast in a PLG, A/B-testing environment — instrument, measure, iterate

• Set a bar for craft across the engineering team — the kind of engineer others learn taste from

• Get hands dirty wherever needed: infra, backend, frontend, animation, whatever the problem demands

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience building modern frontend applications.

• Recent, hands-on frontend experience in your current or most recent role, working extensively with React and TypeScript.

• Expert-level proficiency in TypeScript, HTML, and CSS.

• Deep experience with React, Next.js 15+, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Query, and state-management libraries such as Jotai, Zustand, or Redux.

• Strong understanding of frontend architecture, performance, accessibility, design systems, and maintainable component patterns.

• Proven ability to lead complex frontend initiatives and influence technical direction across teams.

• Experience partnering closely with product and design teams to deliver polished, high-quality user experiences.

• Proficiency with Git-based workflows and design tools such as Figma.

• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, raising engineering standards, and communicating technical trade-offs clearly.

Bonus

• Experience with NestJS and Prisma.

• Experience writing E2E tests with Playwright.

• React Native or mobile development experience.

• A background in design, motion, animation, or interaction design.

• Experience at an early-stage startup or consumer-facing product company.

• Experience at a product-led growth company such as Duolingo, Spotify, Strava, Notion, or Monzo.

• Ideal: In-person/hybrid in Lisbon

• Remote in Europe (preference: Western/continental Europe)

• Salary: no fixed budget. Flexible.

• Stock options: yes

• Contract type: full-time employment, independent contractor

• Tech Stack: Node.js, React.js, React Native, Next.js, Nest.js, Expo, Prisma, Tailwind, AWS