Lead Engineer - Front End

dunnhumby is the global leader in Customer Data Science, empowering businesses everywhere to compete and thrive in the modern data-driven economy. We always put the Customer First.

Our mission: to enable businesses to grow and reimagine themselves by becoming advocates and champions for their Customers. With deep heritage and expertise in retail – one of the world’s most competitive markets, with a deluge of multi-dimensional data – dunnhumby today enables businesses all over the world, across industries, to be Customer First.

dunnhumby employs nearly 2,500 experts in offices throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas working for transformative, iconic brands such as Tesco, Coca-Cola, Meijer, Procter & Gamble and Metro.

We are seeking a Lead Front-End Engineer to drive excellence in front-end development and user experience for our high-scale SaaS platform. This role will be instrumental in shaping the front-end architecture, defining best practices ensuring high performance, security, and accessibility standards, and mentoring engineers.

You will collaborate closely with backend engineers, product teams, UX designers, and platform engineers to ensure our applications are scalable, resilient, and user-friendly. You will also work with New Relic and Google Lighthouse to monitor front-end performance and observability.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership: Define and establish front-end engineering best practices, including architecture, performance optimization, and maintainability.
• Front-End Architecture: Design and implement scalable, modular component architectures using ReactJS and optimize UI performance using tools like Google Lighthouse.
• Collaboration with Backend & BFF Teams: Work with backend teams to design API interactions that balance efficiency and security, without overloading the front-end.
• Mentorship & Upskilling: Guide and mentor engineers, establishing a strong front-end culture.
• CI/CD & Deployment: Improve front-end build pipelines, automated deployments, and observability using GitLab and Octopus Deploy.
• User Experience & Accessibility: Ensure the UI is fast, accessible, and intuitive, aligning with UX design best practices.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8+ years of front-end development experience with ReactJS, TypeScript, and JavaScript (ES6+), Design patterns and modern UI frameworks.

• Experience with Micro Frontends architecture and component libraries (e.g., Storybook, Material UI).
• Deep understanding of front-end performance optimization, Core Web Vitals, accessibility (WCAG), Webpack Bundle Analyzer, and React Profiler.
• Experience integrating front-end applications with RESTful APIs and GraphQL.
• Strong knowledge of component-based architectures, and UI state management (Redux, React Query, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing (Jest, Cypress, React Testing Library), and deployment automation (GitLab, Octopus Deploy).
• Experience working in cloud-based SaaS environments, with GCP preferred.
• Strong collaboration skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams, including back-end engineers, UX designers, and product managers.
• Experience with styled-components and Emotion in ReactJS for modular and scoped CSS-in-JS, enabling efficient and dynamic styling.
• Test-Driven Development (TDD) approach to ensure code reliability and quality in complex projects.
• Proficiency with Webpack's advanced features like tree-shaking, lazy loading, code-splitting, and bundle optimization.
• In-depth knowledge of Webpack, Babel, ESLint, Prettier, and other modern build tools and task runners for optimizing development workflows.

What you can expect from us

We won’t just meet your expectations. We’ll defy them. So you’ll enjoy the comprehensive rewards package you’d expect from a leading technology company. But also, a degree of personal flexibility you might not expect.  Plus, thoughtful perks, like flexible working hours and your birthday off.

You’ll also benefit from an investment in cutting-edge technology that reflects our global ambition. But with a nimble, small-business feel that gives you the freedom to play, experiment and learn.

And we don’t just talk about diversity and inclusion. We live it every day – with thriving networks including dh Gender Equality Network, dh Proud, dh Family, dh One and dh Thrive as the living proof.  We want everyone to have the opportunity to shine and perform at your best throughout our recruitment process. Please let us know how we can make this process work best for you. For an informal and confidential chat please contact stephanie.winson@dunnhumby.com to discuss how we can meet your needs. 

Our approach to Flexible Working

At dunnhumby, we value and respect difference and are committed to building an inclusive culture by creating an environment where you can balance a successful career with your commitments and interests outside of work.

We believe that you will do your best at work if you have a work / life balance. Some roles lend themselves to flexible options more than others, so if this is important to you please raise this with your recruiter, as we are open to discussing agile working opportunities during the hiring process.

For further information about how we collect and use your personal information please see our Privacy Notice which can be found (here)