Lead Engineer - Frontend, Design Systems

Deputy is a global SaaS workforce management company headquartered in Sydney, San Francisco, and London. Our platform serves over 1.5 million workers and 375,000 workplaces across 100+ countries. We are backed by top global investors and recently achieved Unicorn status. 

At Deputy, we’re improving the world of work, one shift at a time, for 80% of the world’s workforce: hourly workers. These are the dedicated employees who keep our world running – from baristas to nurses, cleaners to delivery drivers, florists to factory workers. Despite their vital role in society, most workplace technology has focused on those workers who sit behind a desk, but at Deputy, we transform the frontline. When businesses use Deputy, their workplaces thrive – the business is more profitable, compliant, and productive, while the workers are more engaged and happier at work.

If you’re passionate about creating solutions that put people first and helping businesses and their teams thrive, join us at Deputy and make an impact where it matters most!

We’re seeking a highly skilled and visionary Tech Lead to drive the growth and impact of our design system, Copilot. 

In this key role, you’ll partner closely with the Design Lead to ensure a smooth and seamless transition from design to code, fostering collaboration between design and engineering. 

You’ll play a crucial role in driving design and engineering collaboration to ensure that our front-end experiences are of the highest quality—intuitive, delightful, and consistent for our customers. 

As an advocate for Copilot, you’ll evangelise its benefits, ensuring that our engineering teams are informed, up-to-date, and inspired by the front-end design strategy. 

You wake up every morning knowing with confidence that your work is being used to power 365,000 workplaces and the livelihood of millions of users worldwide.

Responsibilities - Drive the design system technical strategy and implementation:

• Strategy: Lead the design and development of a comprehensive component library in Vue.js, focusing on reusable, maintainable, and scalable components to underpin and support the design system vision.
• Implementation: Lead the creation and implementation, and continuous improvement of reusable components, technical resources, tools, onboarding and documentation.
• Governance: Establish and document best practices, code quality standards, and ensure UX consistency.
• Provide a framework for accessibility and inclusion in both the design and development process.

Communication and leadership:

• Communication: You are a clear and proactive communicator and can articulate your ideas when writing and speaking. 
• Leadership: You take initiative and call for support when you need it. Ability to lead by example, rolling up your sleeves to “show the way”
• Project management: Ability to prioritise and manage projects utilising industry standard frameworks and tools and rituals.
• Design/Front end: You value good design, have an eye for detail, and can interpret technical concepts to a non-technical audience to engage stakeholders.
• Alignment: Foster team alignment and collaboration on technical decisions to ensure a cohesive direction.
• Diverse perspectives: Create a culture where feedback is welcomed, allowing the team to challenge and improve ideas collectively. Create an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions.

Technical Execution:

• Design, implement and deliver reusable components for product features with consideration to high performance, high-quality systems and applications using modern industry best practices.
• Influence and problem-solve with senior, mid, and junior engineers to deliver high-quality outcomes. Your leadership and mentorship will drive the squads to successful outcomes.
• Ensure reliability and quality of the Design System through automated tooling like linters and tests.
• Write simple, efficient, self-documented modular high-quality code that follows best practices.
• Engage in technical discussion of solutions and process improvement through documentation, design reviews, pair programming, code review and technology discussions.
• Optimize the build process and modularity of the component library.
• Share your expertise through documentation, design reviews, code contributions, presentations and technology discussions.

Skills & Experience:

• 6+ years of experience in software development and 2+ years of experience as a senior engineer.
• Expert-level proficiency of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (ES6+), TypeScript, and build tools (Vite, Webpack, etc.).
• Solid experience developing an accessible and responsive Component Library for a JavaScript framework such as React, Vue or Angular.
• Holistic understanding of the build, test and release process of a shared library, following semantic versioning.
• Proven track record of leading technical teams, including mentoring junior and mid-level developers, providing technical guidance, conducting code reviews, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
• Proven leadership in driving projects from concept to delivery, working cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and engineering teams to align on vision, requirements, and timelines.
• Expert at communicating complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, building alignment on vision, priorities, and timelines, and contributing to key decision-making at the strategic level.
• Extensive experience with CI/CD pipelines, ensuring seamless integration and deployment workflows that accelerate development cycles and ensure high-quality releases.
• Passionate about staying at the cutting edge of development technologies, continuously learning and experimenting with new tools, frameworks, and methodologies to improve development practices and outcomes.

Employee Perks

- Ownership in the company via Share Options

- Paternity/Maternity Leave Policies

- Flexible Remote-First Work Policy

- Company wide Development & Coaching

- Hackathons

- Awards - "Your Time to Shine & Celebrate Success"

- Social Events & variety of social clubs (Books, LGBT, Games, Sports)

- Mental Health Support

- Munch & Learns

Deputy believes in equal opportunity and that inclusiveness and diversity promotes innovation. Our global team members are from a variety of cultures. And we welcome different perspective and skills. 

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