Lead Frontend Developer

Lead Front-End Developer / Lead Web Application Developer

Location: Wilmslow

Working pattern: Hybrid, 50% office based

We’re supporting an established UK financial services organisation as it builds a new platform for its workplace pensions business. This is a multi-year programme to replace a long-standing system with a modern capability designed to support employers and customers for decades to come.

The engineering squads are taking shape now. As Lead Front-End Developer, you’ll help build the web application and make the early technical decisions that shape how it develops.

What you’ll do

You’ll be a hands-on technical lead, spending around 80% of your time developing. You’ll build with Angular and TypeScript, work with GraphQL as the API layer serving the front end, and guide the design and engineering standards for the web application.

You’ll work in a small, cross-functional squad alongside another front-end developer, Java back-end developers and testers. You’ll coach the other front-end developer, work through new technical challenges with the squad and help establish patterns that will serve the platform as it grows.

This role has no line management or HR responsibilities. Your leadership will come through your technical expertise, the decisions you make and your ability to bring other developers with you.

Core skills and experience

• Deep, hands-on experience building Angular and TypeScript applications. You’ll need enough depth in Angular to lead others working with the framework.
• Experience with GraphQL and how front-end applications use an API layer.
• Experience contributing to a new application, platform build or major rebuild, where you helped make foundational technical decisions.
• Demonstrable technical leadership: shaping front-end design, setting engineering standards, solving difficult problems and mentoring developers.
• A strong approach to code quality, testing and maintainable application design.
• Clear communication and the confidence to explain technical choices to engineers and stakeholders.

Desirable experience

• Building web applications in a complex or regulated environment.
• Working closely with Java back-end teams on APIs and service integration.
• Front-end test automation, including Playwright.
• Experience improving application performance, accessibility or developer practices across a team.

This could suit someone who is already a Lead Front-End Developer or a strong senior developer who has already demonstrated technical leadership. Depth in Angular is important: experience primarily in React, with only limited exposure to Angular, is unlikely to be sufficient for this lead role.