Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Front End Full Stack Engineer

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires a Front End Full Stack Engineer — a pragmatic, product-minded developer who designs and implements beautiful, high-performance user interfaces while also building and maintaining the backend services that power them. This role requires deep expertise in modern front-end frameworks (React/Next.js/Vue), TypeScript and JavaScript (ES6+), paired with strong Node.js backend skills, API design (REST/GraphQL), testing, CI/CD, and cloud deployment. The successful candidate will work closely with designers, product managers, QA and platform teams to deliver end-to-end features, improve developer experience, and continuously optimize performance, accessibility and reliability.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Front-end Developer with backend experience
Full Stack Developer (JavaScript/TypeScript) at a small-to-medium company
Software Engineer with strong UI + API experience

Advancement To:

Staff Front End Engineer / Staff Full Stack Engineer
Engineering Lead / Team Lead
Principal Engineer or Architect (Frontend Platforms)
Head of Frontend or Director of Engineering

Lateral Moves:

UX/Design Engineering (Design Systems Engineer)
Platform or Developer Experience Engineer
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) with web focus

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Own the end-to-end design, development and delivery of user-facing features: architect front-end components, build backend endpoints (Node.js/Express or serverless functions), integrate with databases and third-party services, and ship production-ready releases.
Build and maintain modern, component-driven front-end architectures using React, Next.js, Vue or similar, with TypeScript for strong typing and maintainability.
Design and implement scalable RESTful APIs and GraphQL services to power UIs, including schema design, resolvers, input validation, versioning and API contract testing.
Optimize application performance across the stack: client-side rendering, server-side rendering (SSR), code-splitting, lazy loading, image optimization, caching strategies and critical path rendering improvements.
Implement and maintain a robust design system and reusable component library (Storybook, CSS-in-JS, tokens) to increase velocity, consistency and accessibility across products.
Ensure cross-browser compatibility and responsive design across devices (mobile, tablet, desktop), including touch interactions and progressive enhancement.
Lead front-end architecture decisions such as routing, state management (Redux, Zustand, React Query), and side-effect handling while balancing simplicity and scalability.
Write comprehensive automated tests: unit tests (Jest), component tests (React Testing Library), end-to-end tests (Cypress, Playwright) and integration tests for API endpoints.
Ship features using CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Jenkins), automate build, test and deployment steps, and practice trunk-based development and feature flags for safer releases.
Work with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) to deploy server-side components, manage serverless functions (Lambda), containerized services (Docker) and handle environment configuration securely.
Implement best-practice security measures including authentication/authorization (OAuth, JWT), input sanitization, CORS, rate limiting, and secure storage of secrets.
Monitor production health and performance using observability tools (Sentry, Datadog, New Relic), triage incidents, and implement instrumentation and logging for actionable telemetry.
Collaborate with UX designers and product managers to translate prototypes and requirements into implementation plans, provide technical estimates, and recommend tradeoffs for scope and timeline.
Participate in code reviews and mentoring: enforce coding standards, improve code quality, and help teammates grow through pair-programming and knowledge-sharing sessions.
Troubleshoot and debug complex issues in production; perform root cause analysis and deliver long-term fixes rather than short patches.
Implement accessibility (a11y) standards (WCAG 2.1): semantic markup, keyboard navigation, ARIA attributes, color contrast and assistive technology testing.
Drive technical initiatives to improve developer experience: faster local builds, better error messages, shared tooling and templates for consistent onboarding.
Integrate analytics, experiment platforms and instrumentation (Amplitude, Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Optimizely) to measure feature impact and support A/B testing.
Manage data flow and caching on the client and server: implement cache invalidation, ETags, stale-while-revalidate patterns, and CDN strategies for global performance.
Build real-time features where required using WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or real-time frameworks (Socket.io, Pusher, GraphQL subscriptions).
Maintain and improve database integrations (relational and NoSQL), write efficient queries, and collaborate with data engineering to ensure schema stability and migration strategies.
Drive backward- and forward-compatible releases: API versioning, deprecation policies and migration plans to minimize customer impact.
Contribute to technical documentation: API docs, runbooks, architecture diagrams, onboarding guides and public-facing developer docs.
Actively participate in sprint planning, grooming and retrospectives; break down work into manageable tasks and communicate progress and blockers proactively.
Evaluate new frameworks and libraries; make informed recommendations and lead experiments or prototypes to validate technical choices.
Contribute to cost optimization efforts for cloud resources, reduce unnecessary compute, and ensure scalability for traffic spikes.
Advocate for product quality by partnering with QA on acceptance criteria, test coverage and release readiness.

Secondary Functions

Provide ad-hoc support for performance investigations and exploratory front-end instrumentation.
Help the platform team design SDKs or micro-frontends to accelerate feature development across teams.
Assist in coordinating cross-team releases, migrations (e.g., to Next.js or TypeScript), and large-scale refactors.
Participate in hiring interviews, technical screens and onboarding new engineers.
Support localization/internationalization efforts by implementing i18n frameworks and build-time translation pipelines.
Contribute to open-source tools or internal libraries as part of strengthening company engineering reputation.
Work with legal and privacy teams to ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA and related data protection requirements.
Run periodic accessibility audits and remediation sprints to keep the product compliant and inclusive.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level JavaScript (ES6+) and TypeScript for building large-scale applications, with strong understanding of language features, typing patterns and compiler configuration.
Proven experience with React and React ecosystem: hooks, context, Suspense, concurrent rendering patterns, Next.js for SSR/SSG and performance.
Solid Node.js backend development skills (Express, Koa, or serverless) including API design, middleware, and server-side rendering integration.
Experience designing and consuming REST APIs and GraphQL endpoints, including schema design, pagination, batching and caching strategies.
Proficient with HTML5, semantic markup, modern CSS (Flexbox, Grid), pre-processors (Sass/LESS) and CSS-in-JS libraries (styled-components, emotion).
Test-driven development and extensive experience with testing frameworks: Jest, React Testing Library, Cypress or Playwright for E2E tests.
Familiarity with build tools and bundlers: Webpack, Vite, Rollup, Babel; and optimization techniques like tree-shaking and minification.
Experience with state management libraries: Redux, MobX, Zustand, or React Query for server-state patterns.
Practical knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, feature flag systems, Git workflows, and release automation (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Jenkins).
Working experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), serverless architecture, Docker and container orchestration basics.
Understanding of database systems (Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB) and writing performant queries and migrations.
Observability and performance tooling expertise: Sentry, Datadog, Lighthouse, WebPageTest, and browser profiling.
Strong grasp of web security fundamentals: OWASP top 10, secure authentication flows, data encryption and access control.
Experience with accessibility standards and testing tools (axe-core, NVDA/VoiceOver) to ship inclusive products.
Familiarity with analytics, A/B testing frameworks and feature experimentation to measure impact and iterate on features.
Experience with caching strategies, CDNs (CloudFront, Fastly), and HTTP performance headers for global distribution.
Exposure to microservices, API gateways and orchestration is a plus for complex backend integrations.

Soft Skills

Strong written and verbal communication — able to explain technical choices to non-technical stakeholders and document design decisions.
Product-oriented mindset: balances user experience, performance and developer velocity while making pragmatic tradeoffs.
Collaborative team player who works effectively with designers, product managers and backend/platform engineers.
Ownership and accountability: drives features from conception through production and supports them post-launch.
Mentorship and coaching orientation — helps teammates level up through reviews, pair programming and brown-bag sessions.
Analytical problem-solving with an ability to break down complex systems and deliver incremental improvements.
Adaptable to changing priorities and comfortable working in agile, fast-paced environments.
Detail-oriented with a strong focus on code quality, maintainability and testability.
Empathetic approach to accessibility and inclusive product design.
Time management and prioritization skills to balance multiple concurrent deliverables.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Informatics, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in a technical discipline or completion of reputable engineering bootcamps with demonstrable production experience.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science
Software Engineering
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Web Development / Informatics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7+ years building production web applications with significant front-end and backend responsibilities.

Preferred: 5+ years of professional experience as a Front End, Full Stack or Software Engineer with:

Multiple shipped web products or features end-to-end.
Demonstrated experience with React/Next.js + TypeScript and Node.js APIs in production.
Proven track record of performance optimization, accessibility improvements, and driving cross-functional initiatives.