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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for a Front End Designer

💰 $90,000 - $145,000

DesignEngineeringFront End DevelopmentUI/UXTechnology

🎯 Role Definition

This role requires a passionate and talented Front End Designer to join our dynamic product team. This is a unique hybrid role for a creative individual who is fluent in both the language of design and the logic of code. You will be responsible for bringing our user interfaces to life, translating design concepts and wireframes into high-quality, responsive, and interactive web experiences. The ideal candidate has a keen eye for detail, a deep understanding of user-centered design principles, and the technical expertise to build what they design. You will be a critical bridge between our UI/UX designers and our back-end engineering teams, ensuring our digital products are not only visually stunning but also functional, accessible, and performant.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • UI Developer
  • Web Designer with coding skills
  • Front End Developer with a strong interest in design

Advancement To:

  • Senior Front End Designer / UI Engineer
  • Lead Product Designer
  • Design Systems Architect

Lateral Moves:

  • UX Designer
  • Creative Technologist
  • Product Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Translate high-fidelity mockups, prototypes, and design specifications from Figma or Sketch into clean, scalable, and reusable front-end components using React, Vue.js, or a similar modern framework.
  • Develop, test, and maintain visually appealing and highly interactive responsive web applications that deliver an exceptional user experience across all browsers and devices.
  • Collaborate intimately with UX/UI designers to ensure the technical feasibility of their designs, providing constructive feedback to refine concepts for implementation.
  • Champion and evolve our comprehensive design system, building and documenting new components to ensure visual and interactive consistency across the entire product suite.
  • Write clean, semantic, and accessible HTML and CSS/SASS, ensuring our applications meet or exceed WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards.
  • Own the end-to-end implementation of user-facing features, from initial concept and prototyping to final deployment and post-launch iteration.
  • Optimize web applications for maximum speed, scalability, and performance, addressing any bottlenecks and ensuring a smooth, fast user experience.
  • Implement intricate animations and micro-interactions that enhance usability and provide a delightful, polished feel to the user interface.
  • Act as the primary advocate for the user within the development team, ensuring all technical decisions are made with the user's needs and experience in mind.
  • Conduct thorough cross-browser and cross-device testing to identify and resolve layout, rendering, and performance issues before they reach production.
  • Participate in and contribute to user research sessions, usability testing, and A/B tests to gather qualitative and quantitative feedback for design iteration.
  • Create interactive prototypes and proof-of-concepts to quickly validate design ideas and user flows with stakeholders and end-users.
  • Work closely with Product Managers to understand business requirements and user stories, translating them into tangible and elegant UI solutions.
  • Integrate with back-end services, consuming RESTful or GraphQL APIs to display and manipulate data within the front-end application.
  • Establish and maintain front-end coding standards, best practices, and style guides to improve code quality and team velocity.
  • Manage and version control your codebase using Git, participating in pull request reviews to provide and receive constructive feedback.
  • Debug and resolve complex front-end issues, effectively tracing problems through the technology stack to find and implement robust solutions.
  • Stay at the forefront of emerging front-end technologies, design trends, and UX methodologies, and advocate for their adoption where they can provide value.
  • Create and maintain technical documentation for front-end architecture, components, and processes to facilitate knowledge sharing.
  • Craft pixel-perfect user interfaces that are true to the original design vision while also being practical and maintainable from an engineering perspective.

Secondary Functions

  • Mentor junior designers and developers on front-end best practices, design principles, and our internal technology stack.
  • Contribute to the continuous improvement of our team's agile development processes and workflows.
  • Participate actively in brainstorming sessions, design critiques, and sprint planning ceremonies, offering a unique perspective that blends design and engineering.
  • Support the marketing team with the creation of interactive landing pages or microsites for campaigns.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Expert-Level Proficiency: HTML5, CSS3, and CSS pre-processors like SASS or LESS.
  • Modern JavaScript: Strong command of modern JavaScript (ES6+) and ideally TypeScript.
  • Front-End Frameworks: Extensive hands-on experience with at least one major framework like React, Vue.js, or Angular.
  • Design Tools: High proficiency in design and prototyping tools such as Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD.
  • Responsive & Mobile-First Design: A deep understanding of responsive design principles and the ability to develop for a wide range of screen sizes.
  • Version Control: Fluency with Git, GitHub/GitLab, and collaborative Git workflows (e.g., branching, pull requests).
  • Web Accessibility: Solid knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG, ARIA) and experience building accessible products.
  • Performance Optimization: Experience with browser developer tools for debugging and optimizing front-end performance (e.g., Lighthouse, WebPageTest).
  • Build Tools: Familiarity with modern front-end build pipelines and tools like Webpack, Vite, or Parcel.
  • API Integration: Experience consuming and working with RESTful or GraphQL APIs.
  • Design Systems: Proven experience building, using, or contributing to a design system and reusable component library (e.g., Storybook).

Soft Skills

  • Visual Acuity & Attention to Detail: A meticulous eye for typography, color, spacing, and layout to create pixel-perfect experiences.
  • Communication & Collaboration: Excellent ability to articulate design decisions and technical concepts to both designers and engineers.
  • Problem-Solving: A creative and analytical approach to solving complex UI/UX challenges.
  • User Empathy: A genuine passion for understanding user needs and advocating for them throughout the development process.
  • Adaptability: Thrives in a fast-paced, iterative environment and is open to feedback and change.
  • Ownership & Autonomy: Proactive and self-motivated, with the ability to manage tasks and projects from concept to completion.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

A Bachelor's degree or equivalent, compelling portfolio of real-world projects. We value experience and a strong portfolio over formal education.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field of study.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Computer Science
  • Graphic Design
  • Digital Media or a related field

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

3-7 years of professional experience in a front-end development or hybrid design/development role.

Preferred:

A strong portfolio showcasing a blend of visual design flair and technical front-end implementation skills is required. Experience working within an agile product team at a SaaS, e-commerce, or tech-driven company is highly desirable.

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