Senior Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer - UI Specialist

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer with a strong UI specialisation to join our Design System Team. Our design system powers almost every web application across Nando's - from customer-facing digital experiences to internal workflow tools and restaurant operations systems. We're a small, specialist team that's highly valued across the organisation, with strong support from engineering and design leadership.

With your expertise in frontend technologies and passion for design principles, you will play a key role in enabling our vision: to create a unified brand experience for customers across all digital touchpoints.

What You'll Do

• Co-architect and drive the technical direction of our design system alongside the technical lead
• Contribute to the maintenance, evolution, and advocacy of our digital design system
• Develop high-quality, scalable, and maintainable UI components and tooling that meet accessibility, performance and design standards
• Collaborate closely with designers to provide feedback and help realise our shared vision for UI & UX
• Support agile cross-functional teams as they adopt and adapt the system using modern web technologies and frameworks
• Mentor and coach engineers in modern web technologies and development best practices to help foster a culture of collaboration and innovation
• Actively participate in code reviews, testing, and deployment processes to ensure high-quality software development practices
• Take a proactive approach to identifying opportunities and driving improvements across the system

What We're Looking For

• Strong proficiency with React and TypeScript: You are comfortable architecting complex component systems
• Expert-level proficiency in writing scalable, maintainable CSS - you have a deep understanding of CSS architecture, specificity, cascade, and layout systems, with a keen eye for detail
• Extensive experience with modern frontend tooling such as Next.js, Storybook, and Vite
• Strong foundations in client-side engineering best practices, including HTML semantics, accessibility, and web performance
• Experience with testing strategies, including visual regression testing, unit testing and accessibility audits
• A passion for mentoring engineers and providing constructive feedback to improve code quality and team performance
• Strong communication skills - able to articulate technical decisions, present architectural options clearly, and build relationships across engineering and design teams

Nice to Have

• A proven record of contributing to design systems or UI libraries at scale
• A solid understanding of zero-runtime CSS-in-JS solutions and atomic styling methodologies, advanced styling solutions such as vanilla-extract or CSS Modules
• Experience working with design tokens and styling portability across platforms
• Interest in emerging AI-assisted development tools - we're investigating how these can support our work, whilst maintaining our focus on quality and craftsmanship
• Practical knowledge of accessibility testing and tools to ensure we meet WCAG guidelines and provide a great user experience for everyone
• Experience working with modern CI/CD and engineering tooling - we use Cloud Build, GitHub Actions and Terraform

You Are

• Proactive and self-directed - you thrive in a small, dedicated specialist function and don't need constant direction
• Kind and empathetic, encouraging others to do their best work and building a psychologically-safe, happy workplace
• People-focused with a genuine interest in mentoring and supporting engineers
• A great communicator who can tailor conversations to your audience at all levels of the business
• Passionate about client-side web development and staying up to date with the latest technologies and trends
• Experienced in building and deploying web applications with a focus on scalability, maintainability and user experience
• Someone who enjoys close collaboration with designers and takes pride in realising design vision through code