Remote Lead Front-End/UI Developer at Interaction Design Foundation

About the role At the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF), we're a leader in UX and UI design education, renowned for our exceptional courses and masterclasses. Our ambition is to set a global benchmark in online learning. Now, we're looking for a front-end developer who's as outstanding as our educational content. Are you driven by the idea of elevating online education? Do you want to be part of a mission that makes a real difference? Join us, and let's create something remarkable together.

As our Lead Front-End/UI Developer, you'll be instrumental in revolutionizing our web application. You'll make crucial front-end decisions and:

• Collaborate with talented designers and developers to implement an advanced design system.
• Transition our learning platform into a PWA, ready for app store release (Vue + Capacitor or alternatives).
• Boost performance and responsiveness of current and new pages, including enhancing Web Vitals.
• Lead frontend strategy and help in making product and design discussions.

About the Project

Our Dev Team is dedicated to enhancing our primary product: a web application hosting online courses, masterclasses, and community tools. Started in 2013, we've consistently improved code quality, features, and test coverage, achieving nearly zero legacy code or technical debt. How? Through our rigorously refined IxDF UI Kit and JavaScript conventions for the front end, and steadfast IxDF PHP and Laravel conventions for the back end. Our CI is highly automated with tools like ESLint, Stylelint, cypress.io, PurgeCSS, and more, complemented by regular pull request reviews.

The Stack You Will Work On

• #UseThePlatform. We use modern web standards and APIs available in evergreen browsers to achieve the best performance without the need to upgrade to a new framework every few years. Our key technologies include:
• Web Components, Laravel Blade template engine for server-side HTML.
• PostCSS with postcss-preset-env plugin.
• Vite as the best frontend development environment.
• Latest JS for evergreen browsers (with polyfills).
• BEM/ITCSS in combination with Tailwind CSS based utility classes (subject to changes).
• Linux, Docker compose, nginx; MySQL, Redis DBs.
• PHPUnit, Laravel Dusk, cypress.io for testing.
• Amazon S3, CloudFront, and GitHub actions for CI/CD, enabling multiple daily zero-downtime deployments.

What You Will Be Doing

• You'll collaborate with senior developers, UI/UX designers, content and product leads, and our founders. Your tasks include:
• Leading front-end development and continuously enhancing our code
• Developing new features and participating in refactorings.
• Monitoring and improving application performance and accessibility.
• Writing reusable components using WebComponents, Vue 3, Laravel Blade, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Maintaining PostCSS code base, improving CSS architecture and guidelines.
• Automating and maintaining testing and code quality checks.
• Collaborating with our design team to enhance UX.
• Increasing test coverage and conducting code reviews.
• Regularly deploying code with zero downtime.

About you

• You have at least 6 years of experience working as a Front-End Developer.
• You know and prefer native web APIs and functionality over alluring new frameworks – and you know how and when to use them.
• You are aware of and use the latest web standards.
• You are an engineer by mindset and always try to understand how things work under the hood.
• CSS and UI is your passion.
• You have strict experience with at least one modern front-end framework.
• You write testable code.
• You love to learn through doing. You’re always ready to put in some hard work to expand your skills.
• You are self-motivated and self-disciplined and thus work well in a flat hierarchy with lots of freedom.
• You love to have creative freedom, make independent judgments, and live up to the responsibility that comes with that freedom.
• You speak and write acceptable English – not perfect English, just acceptable – since you will be working with people from all around the world.
• You get bonus points…
• …if you have experience building mobile apps using web stack.
• …if you have PHP coding experience.
• …if you hold a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.

What we can offer

• A founder and CEO who is also a developer, understanding your challenges and triumphs.
• A zero-effort development environment based on Docker, streamlining your workflow.
• The opportunity to refine and develop battle-tested guidelines for JS and CSS.
• Access to a comprehensive library of books and courses, ensuring your skills and knowledge remain at the forefront.
• A full-time position, within a fully remote organization. Daily video-based contact with your colleagues from elsewhere on the planet, and you’ll get to meet them on team trips 1–2 times per year.
• Forget fluffy titles, political agendas and corporate drama. Your colleagues value your character, work ethic, and what you actually achieve. Junior or senior, if you embody old-school virtues of always striving to become the best version of yourself, you'll thrive at the IxDF.
• Work with a highly scalable impact-driven model where we’ve consistently created more than 50% growth year-on-year since 2013. Bootstrapped with zero investment capital but built purely on consistency over time and the conviction that affordable design education can improve the quality of life of humankind.
• Work in a company where the distance between idea and execution is minimal. We’re a highly agile organization with zero bureaucracy or corporate politics – but with a high level of orderliness and efficiency.
• Have the chance to feel the impact of helping an ever-growing design education brand empower and enrich the lives of millions of people.
• Work in a company culture where idealism meets high performance and excellence. To help us improve the world (and yourself in the process), you’ll need grit, work ethic, long-term thinking, and self-discipline.
• Work with people who have a hands-on attitude and a bias towards action as opposed to fluff-filled, unrealistic strategies. You’ll need crisp execution skills yourself and the ability to impress your colleagues with concrete results, just like they’ll impress you.

How to learn more and apply

We are currently accepting applications only directly from our Careers page. To start your application as well as learn more about our Work Culture and Values, please visithttps://www.interaction-design.org/about/careers

Please apply as soon as you can—we’re firm believers in the adage “the sooner, the better”, and we look forward to working with you!