Senior Frontend Engineer

⚠️ Please read first

• This is a full-time, in-person role based in San Francisco (Presidio) - we work from the office 5 days a week .

• You must be based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate before starting .

• We require US work authorisation , but are open to O-1 visa sponsorship for truly exceptional candidates.
  

What You'll Do

You'll own the frontend of Sauna — shipping interfaces that feel instant, intuitive, and polished even when the underlying work is complex.

You'll need to make product and design calls yourself, prototype quickly, and execute without waiting for perfect specs. Sometimes you'll implement designs. Other times you'll create them.

Stack

TypeScript, React, Next.js, Y.js, TipTap, Cloudflare Workers.

Who you are

Minimum

• 4+ years of frontend engineering with a portfolio that'll make the founders stop scrolling. We want to see complex, polished interfaces you've shipped.

• Expert in TypeScript and React — you understand reconciliation, when to bail out of renders, and how the browser actually works.

• Product sense and design intuition — you can take a rough product direction, sketch an interaction, and ship something that feels right. You notice when a transition is 50ms too slow or when an affordance is unclear.

• You make design decisions — You'll need to own some UX decisions, create simple designs when needed, and unblock yourself.

• High autonomy, low ego — you don't wait for permission or perfect specs. You ship, gather feedback, and iterate.

• You care about craft — details like loading states, empty states, error messages, keyboard shortcuts. The 1000 small decisions that make software feel good.

Bonus (but not required)

• Built with Y.js, Automerge, or CRDTs for real-time collaboration.

• Experience with rich text editors (ProseMirror, TipTap, Slate).

• Built interfaces for LLM-based tools (streaming responses, handling uncertainty, progressive disclosure).

• Experience with local-first architectures (IndexedDB, service workers, sync strategies).

• Design background or strong visual sense — you can make things look good without a designer.

• Been a founding frontend engineer and established standards from scratch.

The Process

We keep our process simple. Exceptional candidates go from first touch to offer within 2 weeks .

1. Application

   Submit your resume and answer a few short questions. If it looks like a fit, we'll invite you to send a 1-minute Loom video : tell us who you are and why you want to join Wordware.

2. 15-minute intro call

   Quick check to align on location, motivation, and logistics. If it's a go, we move fast from here.

3. 45-minute technical interview

   You'll build a small full-stack app. We're looking for fluency, speed, and product sense.

4. System design interview

   A deep dive into how you think and architect systems. We'll walk through a real Wordware problem together.

5. Final conversation

   Quick vibe check, answer your questions, and scope out the work trial.

6. Work trial

   Paid trial to work on a real project in person with us — usually a few days to two weeks (flexible to do what works for you). See how we work and whether this feels like the right fit on both sides.