Front-end Architect

Toptal

Remote

Senior

Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $100+ million in annual revenue and over 40% year-over-year growth, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote company.

We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.

Position Description

As a Frontend Architect at Toptal, you will help us scale for our continued growth as a game-changing, industry-defining company shaping the future of work. You will be working to keep our software technology aligned with the business’s strategic vision and will work across multiple engineering teams to ensure the development of maintainable and scalable products.

This is a remote position that can be done from anywhere. Due to the remote nature of this role, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.

Responsibilities:

You will work directly with the Chief Software Architect owning the full-cycle of technical solutions across all Toptal products to build a robust unified technical vision and toolset. You will work with 20+ engineering teams to find and analyze present and anticipated future technical challenges with their projects or products. You will build engineering research groups and facilitate work in them to collaboratively design solutions to those challenges. You will work in an entirely distributed company and help define an entirely new space while learning about how an organization scales on a hyper-growth trajectory.

Practical responsibilities involve:

Build and lead research groups of senior and principal engineers to define and decide development technology and platform, define development standards, tools, processes, etc.
In collaboration with the Chief Architect discuss, formulate, and document a vision for Frontend architecture and approaches in all Toptal software products.
Detail out and refine higher-level architecture decisions into a lower-level design.
Lead implementation of technical and infrastructure initiatives to support architecture decisions.
Communicate the vision to the engineering team. Overlook and review the work of the team to ensure that the architecture decisions are being executed and the team is following coding standards and architecture guidelines.
Consult the engineering team with ongoing projects. Help them align solutions with the Toptal architecture vision and industry best practices. Make software design (application-level) decisions with the team, take software architecture topics for further consideration and unification.
Ensure technical knowledge sharing between development teams on related or similar projects.
Lead the research on specific topics, experiment with various technologies, and provide recommendations based on your findings.
Proactively identify technical debt and product areas that require attention or improvement at the architecture level.
Constantly develop yourself and the team in technology advancements, research new approaches, tools and best practices in the software architecture and design space.
Suggest improvements to our technology stack to optimize it for strategic growth and the competitive advantage of Toptal.

In the first week, expect to:

Meet the team and the mentors that will guide you during the onboarding.
Get familiar with our product portfolio and technical stack.
Review Toptal engineering documentation and get ready to be involved in the working process.

In the first month, expect to:

Develop a deeper understanding of our technology, processes, and technical vision.
Get hands-on with the codebase to get an insider view of the product.
Participate in ongoing research and exploration projects.

In the first three months, expect to:

Build productive collaboration with the architects and the engineering team.
Identify and prioritize improvement points in the front-end architecture.
Take a lead in several technology exploration projects.
Provide architecture support to ongoing product development in multiple teams.

In the first six months, expect to:

Resolve technical blockers in the front-end application development.
Make significant contributions to the front-end technology stack and documentation.
Help mentoring engineers in their career progression.
Take an active part in formulating and refining the technical vision.

In the first year, expect to:

Build mature forward-thinking architecture on the front-end.
Create a process for refining front-end projects from the architecture perspective.
Regularly share front-end architecture vision with engineering.
Take a lead role in the technical mentorship and interview strategy of the front-end engineers.

Requirements:

Previous experience working with multiple engineering teams.
Experience in facilitating even the most heated discussions, ability to resolve them and take responsibility for the decisions.
Track record of delivering successful solutions as a leader.
Be a world-class individual contributor. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do. The only way we lead in Toptal is by example.
5+ years of front-end web development experience — preference is given to candidates who have maintained or architected large scale applications.
Proficiency in JavaScript and React. Experience working with or building unified UI libraries.
Clear understanding of software design patterns and principles.
Experience with a variety of web application designs, including monolithic and SOA, understanding of service breakdown and communication principles.
Experience guiding the continuous improvement of process and technology.
Strong sense of ownership. You take responsibility for the success of the engineering teams.
Commitment to quality. You take pride in everything you deliver as a reflection of yourself.
Abstract thinking while paying attention to meaningful details at the same time.
Ability to take smart risks and champion new ideas.
Ability to communicate clearly and constantly with teams in writing and on video calls.
You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.