Front-End Engineer

The Role

Engineers are the functional soul of our team, tasked with transforming creative concepts into production realities for our clients, ourselves, and the open source community. As a Front-end Engineer, you'll specialize in front-end development, bridging the gap between design and production. You'll bring designs to life with clean HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while contributing technical thinking about what's possible on the web. Your responsibilities don't end with code—communication, collaboration, and good judgement matter as much as your technical skills.

Last but not least: People who succeed here are empathetic teammates who are candid, kind, caring, and embody our core values. We believe that diverse, inclusive teams make the most impactful work. Upstatement is deeply invested in ensuring that we have a supportive, growth-oriented environment that works for everyone.

Why Upstatement

Upstatement is a digital product studio with an editorial mindset. We use the tools of design, engineering, and journalism to enrich lives and create a more just society. Our 40-person team works with established leaders (MIT, ESPN, PBS, Microsoft) and emerging companies who are about to change the world. We are members of the kyu Collective and combine the energy of a boutique studio with the business maturity of an established global innovation leader.

• Work with ethical and mission-driven organizations.
• Collaborate in a high-trust environment that empowers creative ownership.
• Build a portfolio you can be proud of.
• Blossom in a small studio culture full of top talent and peers who help you grow.
• Find your path at a place that prizes flexibility: We encourage experimentation, support role switching, and help people balance between maker/manager and lead/support.

What You’ll Do

• Build exceptional front-end experiences. Write high-quality HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that brings designs to life with attention to detail, performance, and web standards.
• Translate design into production. Interpret design files and make implementation decisions—responsive behavior, interaction patterns, performance trade-offs—that honor the design intent while working within web constraints.
• Own front-end quality. Take accountability for semantic markup, efficient styles, smooth interactions, accessibility, and performance.
• Communicate clearly. Articulate technical decisions and trade-offs to both designers and clients. Write clear documentation.
• Collaborate across disciplines. Partner with designers to shape concepts and design throughout the project, not just at handoff. Contribute technical thinking at every phase.
• Lead and mentor. Lead front-end development and share your expertise through code reviews, knowledge shares, and close collaboration.

About You

• Front-end expertise. 2+ years building web experiences with strong command of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript fundamentals. Experience with modern tooling (Sass, Tailwind, React).
• Design sensibility. You care about the details—typography, spacing, interaction patterns, motion/animation. You can interpret design files and make smart decisions when implementing across breakpoints and edge cases.
• Web fundamentals. Strong understanding of accessibility standards, performance best practices, and semantic markup.
• CMS experience. Working familiarity with WordPress or Craft CMS. Experience with decoupled CMSes a plus.
• Modern workflow. Experience with AI-assisted development tools

Compensation

Upstatement is committed to helping our people grow and providing transparent salary benchmarks. This job fits two possible levels in our skill progression framework (something we’d love to share during the interview process). The level depends the candidate’s unique qualifications, to be determined during the interview process.

Level: E2
Official Title: Engineer
Department: Engineering
Salary Range: $95,000 - $110,000

Level: E3
Official Title: Senior Engineer
Department: Engineering
Salary Range: $110,000 - $130,000