Frontend Focused Software Development Engineer
We make websites conversational. Our AI agents turn any website into an interactive experience — chat widgets, intelligent search, and AI embeds that let users ask questions, get answers, and take action without navigating pages. We’re a fast-moving product startup building at the intersection of design and AI, and we need a frontend engineer who brings both craft and conviction to
what they ship.
What We Look For First
Before anything else, we review your work. This is how we assess every candidate:
- GitHub profile — active, with real production repositories. We look at commit consistency, code architecture, folder structure, and how you make decisions under constraints. Boilerplate clones and tutorial repos do not count.
- Live deployed projects — at minimum two publicly accessible web applications. We open them in the browser, resize the window, throttle the connection, and interact with them. We are evaluating visual polish, responsiveness, interaction quality, accessibility, and performance — not just whether it loads.
- UI/UX taste — we will form an opinion on your design sensibility from your live work before we speak to you. If your interfaces feel generic, unfinished, or visually careless, that is signal.
- Code we can read — we will look at your source code. Clean structure, meaningful naming, thoughtful component boundaries, and documented decisions matter as much as functionality.
Applications without a GitHub profile and at least two live deployments will not be reviewed.
The Role
This is a full-ownership frontend role at an early-stage AI startup. You willdesign, build, and maintain the interfaces our customers interact with everyday — from the core product dashboard to landing pages to AI-native conversational experiences. You are not a ticket-taker. You will have direct input on product direction, collaborate closely with founders, and be expected to bring both engineering rigour and design instinct to every surface you touch. We are looking for someone who sits firmly at the intersection of engineering and design: technically deep, visually opinionated, and relentless about quality.
What You’ll Do
Core Engineering - Build and architect production-grade applications using Next.js, React, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS - Implement modern rendering strategies — SSR, SSG, ISR, CSR — with deliberate performance budgets and Lighthouse targets - Integrate real-time features using WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, and streaming APIs - Connect with Node.js/NestJS and Python backends via REST and GraphQL; implement and maintain auth flows (JWT, OAuth 2.0, session-based) - Manage application state using Redux Toolkit, Zu- stand, or TanStack Query; handle forms via React Hook Form and Zod - Own the frontend testing strategy end-to-end — unit, integration, and E2E — using Jest, React Testing Library, and Playwright - Contribute to CI/CD pipelines, Docker-based development environments, and deployment workflows UI/UX Engineering - Translate product requirements, rough wireframes, and Figma designs into polished, pixel-perfect, and accessible web interfaces — independently, without hand-holding - Build and maintain a scalable design system: tokens, spacing scales, typography hierarchy, colour systems, and reusable component patterns - Apply strong visual design fundamentals — layout composition, typographic hierarchy, whitespace, contrast, and colour — directly in code - Build complex dashboards, data-heavy interfaces, and multi-step interactive workflows with a focus on information architecture and usability - Design and implement AI-native UI patterns: streaming chat interfaces, inline AI suggestions, conversational flows, and real-time response rendering - Implement responsive layouts that work flawlessly across breakpoints, devices, and browsers - Conduct UI/UX self-review on your own work — you catch visual inconsistencies, interaction gaps, and accessibility issues before they reach review - Work with animation and micro-interaction libraries to add purposeful motion that enhances, not distracts
Architecture & Quality - Design modular, scalable frontend folder structures with clear separation of concerns - Enforce component-driven development practices using Storybook - Drive structured code reviews and uphold engineering quality standards across the team - Instrument observability and error tracking on the frontend (Sentry or equivalent) - Mentor junior engineers and establish
patterns the whole team can follow
What We’re Looking For
- 2+ years of production-grade frontend development — not freelance experiments or internal tools no one uses. Real products, real users, real traffic.
- Expert-level command of Next.js, React, TypeScript, and modern JavaScript (ES6+)
- Deep understanding of browser rendering, layout, and paint — you can diagnose performance issues beyond “run Lighthouse”
- A genuine, demonstrable eye for design — you understand layout, spacing, typographic scale, visual hierarchy, and colour theory, and you apply them instinctively in code
- Ability to independently take a rough idea or wireframe and produce a clean, well-structured, conversion-focused UI
- Strong working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1) and semantic HTML
- Experience building and consuming design systems, and the discipline to maintain them as a product scales
- Familiarity with design tools — Figma proficiency is a strong plus; you should at minimum be able to inspect, extract, and iterate on designs without designer dependency
- Experience integrating frontend applications with Node.js and Python backends
- Solid Git workflows, Docker-based local development, and CI/CD familiarity
- Ownership mindset — you think about the product and the user, not just the Jira ticket
Technical Depth We’ll Assess
During the hiring process, we will evaluate:
- Frontend architecture decisions — how you structure a scalable Next.js application, what tradeoffs you make and why
- UI/UX implementation quality — can you take a design brief and produce an interface that feels professionally crafted
- Performance mindset — code splitting, lazy loading, image optimisation, caching strategies, render optimisation
- State management and data fetching patterns — how you think about client-server state boundaries
- Component design — reusability, composability, prop interfaces, and avoiding premature abstraction
- Testing approach — what you test, how you test it, and how you think about test coverage vs. maintenance cost
- Design system thinking — how you build for consistency and scale, not just the current screen
Nice to Have
- Experience building AI-powered interfaces — streaming responses, type- writer effects, token-by-token rendering, inline AI suggestions
- Motion design experience — Framer Motion, GSAP, Lottie, CSS animations, and purposeful micro-interactions
- Contributions to open-source React, Next.js, or UI library projects
- Experience with data visualisation libraries — Recharts, D3, Visx, or similar
- Prior experience at an early-stage startup where the design–engineering boundary was blurred
- Exposure to growth-focused frontend work — landing page optimisation, A/B testing, conversion-focused UI
- Basic understanding of backend architecture — enough to have an informed opinion on API design Stack Next.js · React · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · Zustand / Redux Toolkit ·TanStack Query · React Hook Form + Zod · GraphQL / REST · WebSockets· Jest · Playwright · Storybook · Docker · GitHub Actions · Framer Motion · Sentry
What We Offer
- Competitive salary with a strong growth trajectory
- High-impact, high-ownership role — you will directly shape the product experience
- Opportunity to build on cutting-edge AI-driven products from the ground up
- Fast execution cycles, minimal bureaucracy, and direct collaboration with founders
- Learning budget for courses, certifications, and tools
- A culture that values craft — we care deeply about what we ship and how it feels
StepsAI · Hyderabad · We build fast, own things fully, and care deeply about what we ship.
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