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Experienced Front-end Developer at Thinkmill

Key facts

  • Full-time
  • Remote-first (with on-site available in Sydney)
  • Australia & New Zealand residents

About Thinkmill

  • We’re an internationally recognised consultancy that designs and builds software and platforms with long-term clients and partners, including Atlassian, Reckon, Enlitic, Vocal, and more
  • Our team works across a wide range of domains including accounting software, medical AI, online publishing, IoT, and connected products
  • We’re an engineering-led company, with extensive experience developing Design System and Front-end architectures
  • Our model is not typical: we partner with companies both locally and internationally to augment, or become, their design and technology team. This means we get the best of both worlds: the depth of long-term product development usually restricted to single-product companies, as well as the diversity of multi-client agencies
  • We’re serious about open source with contributions including Keystone, Keystatic, Emotion, and react-select
  • We organise popular meet-ups and conferences, including React Sydney, SydJS, and ReactConfAU
  • We’ve been featured in AFR’s Fast100 companies in 2018, 2019, 2021

About the role

Are you looking for an opportunity to work on hyper-functional products and Design Systems, for web and mobile applications? We’re looking for an experienced front-end developer to join our team.

We understand that levels (e.g., mid, senior, principal) differ between organizations and are open to considering someone who may not yet be ready to lead a team. That said, if you’ve demonstrated that you’re on your way to running a project independently, this could also be the right opportunity for you, with plenty of avenues for growth.

Here are a few recent projects you might have worked on if you were already part of the team:

...and here's a few things you might work on soon after you join:

  • Build an application from scratch for a client
  • Maintain a Design System used by tens of thousands of end-users
  • Lead a tight-knit team to work on complex application interfaces
  • Join our team in building out more features in an ongoing project that is being used extensively
  • Design an approach to theming in a Design System that relies on colour functions and palette resolvers, rather than endless definition of component tokens

You'd also contribute directly to the strategy and creative phase of new projects. You'd help us with some of the challenges we expect to face when developing products, like:

  • Figuring out what the pain points are in existing products, and what we can do differently to deliver better experiences
  • Helping decide what mix of features and/or capabilities should (or shouldn't) be in scope of an initial SLC release of a given product or app
  • Participating in interviewing of customers to find out what they are using existing products for and inventing ways we can solve those problems even better than the customers haven't imagined
  • Help us understand the team structure and success criteria for a given project, to maximise the chance of success

Day to day, the job involves...

  • Contributing and driving development efforts, working on long-term projects (no "campaigns", "banners" or "MRECs" to speak of)
  • Working closely with the project team to ship new products and features, or improve upon existing ones utilising and iterating on the Thinkmill method
  • Collaborating from within or adjacent to a design system team on component requirements, and/or contributing back to the system itself. This is a hands-on the tools role
  • Working with clients to plan and deliver work. Good consulting skills and the ability to break down technical jargon in terms that are easily understandable are a requirement

About you

We're looking for someone with expert-level front-end skills who sweats the details and cares deeply about quality. That means...

  • You're a strong communicator, and you can get your ideas across clearly and persuasively in writing. We're a fully remote team, so async written communication is very important.
  • You're prolific at building high quality, well organised UIs and patterns, that balance developer experience (what's the easiest way this could be done?), with real-world constraints like time, budget, feasibility (what's the best thing this could be within the constraints?)
  • You're comfortable operating autonomously and able to unblock yourself when needed.
  • You have experience working effectively within software development teams, and are a positive and supportive member of the team (no genius jerks, please)
  • You possess a keen interest in the ever-evolving tech landscape and how software is made. In other words, you love reading code and trying new things out.
  • You know how the design process works (that is, how designers think, their challenges and the trade-offs and compromises they have to make) and you use this familiarity to work closely with them
  • You have experience in a consulting or agency context and/or experience working directly with key stakeholders (nice to have)
  • Most importantly, you just love to make stuff

Pay and benefits

This is a remote-first, full-time (40 hour per week) position, open to anyone in a time zone between UTC+8 to UTC+13.

The salary range for this role is AUD $120,000 (for someone with excellent front-end skills) to $160,000 plus Super (for someone who can really level up our team in a big way outside of a purely front-end role).

A bunch of additional benefits like parental leave, birthday leave, annual training budget, flexible working hours, and more, are also included.

We will provide you with the equipment you need to do your best work, including a computer, external display, office chair, etc.

How to apply

To apply, write something specifically for this position that tells us why we’re a great fit for each other. Please showcase 1 or 2 projects you’ve worked on recently and tell us what you think we should know about them. Highlight your specific contribution or role – we’re keen to see it and hear the story.

We understand that not everyone has the same amount of time to dedicate to their application, so don’t feel like you need to spend 10 hours on it to stand out. As long as you sound like someone who could be a great fit when we’re actually working together day-to-day with the same time constraints, we really want to meet you.

We’re aiming for this new team member to start asap.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Send an email with the above and your CV to work@thinkmill.com.au (no recruiters for this one, sorry)