Staff Front End Engineer

United States·Columbusfull-timelead

EngineeringFrontend Developer

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Quick Summary

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Performance Design and maintain high-performance Vue 3 + Server-Side Rendered (SSR) applications. Optimize SSR pipelines for speed, memory efficiency, and scalability.

Technical Tools

EngineeringFrontend Developer

We believe homeownership is one of the most powerful ways people can build long-term wealth. Our mission at Lower is to make that path simpler, more accessible, and more connected.

We’re building a one-stop shop homeownership platform that brings together real estate, mortgage lending, technology, and local expertise. Through Lower’s direct-to-consumer lending business, our nationwide retail branches, and our real estate platform Movoto, we meet people wherever they are in the homeownership journey.

We innovate through technology, but human expertise is what sets us apart. Our approach combines a seamless online experience with experienced people. Whether someone wants to handle most of the process online or work directly with a local loan officer or real estate agent, we’re building a platform that gives them the tools, expertise, and support to move forward with confidence.

Job Description

Movoto, part of the Lower family, is a high-scale real estate search and marketplace platform serving 5–10 million active users per month. We build fast, intuitive digital experiences that help consumers make one of life's biggest purchasing decisions, buying a home.

We're hiring a Senior Front-End Software Engineer who thrives on performance optimization, SSR architecture, and pushing modern web applications to their limits. If you enjoy profiling apps, improving Core Web Vitals, reducing hydration cost, and driving Lighthouse scores into the 90s+.

Work Location Expectations: Hybrid with 3 days in office per week from our Austin, TX or Columbus, OH.

What you'll do:

Architecture & Performance

Design and maintain high-performance Vue 3 + Server-Side Rendered (SSR) applications.
Optimize SSR pipelines for speed, memory efficiency, and scalability.
Improve Core Web Vitals (LCP, FCP, CLS, INP, TTFB) across large-scale web applications.
Reduce hydration cost and improve Time to Interactive.
Design and implement effective SSR/CSR hybrid rendering strategies.
Optimize bundle splitting, dynamic imports, and tree-shaking.

JavaScript & Runtime Optimization

Profile JavaScript execution using Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, WebPageTest, and real-user monitoring tools.
Analyze flame graphs, CPU profiles, and memory snapshots to eliminate hot paths and leaks.
Deeply understand browser rendering pipelines, event loops, microtasks vs. macrotasks.
Optimize reactivity systems, large lists, computed properties, watchers, and composables.
Improve Node.js SSR throughput, concurrency handling, and caching strategies.
Implement advanced caching approaches (HTTP, CDN, in-memory, edge caching).

SEO & Rendering Strategy

Ensure SSR output is crawlable, indexable, and structured correctly for search engines.
Optimize structured data, meta tags, and pre-render strategies.
Balance performance improvements with SEO and discoverability goals.
Partner with SEO and product teams to align technical implementation with organic growth strategy.

AI-Native Engineering & Workflow

Use AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor) as part of the daily development workflow to accelerate implementation, refactoring, and debugging.
Apply agentic and AI-native workflows to routine engineering tasks — code review prep, test generation, documentation, and performance profiling — to increase team velocity.
Evaluate and adopt emerging AI-powered developer tooling, contributing to team standards and best practices for AI-assisted development.

Engineering Excellence & Collaboration

Write clean, maintainable, well-tested JavaScript code.
Participate in architectural discussions and technical decision-making.
Perform thoughtful code reviews and help raise the quality bar.
Mentor mid-level and junior engineers on performance and front-end best practices.
Collaborate cross-functionally with product managers, designers, backend engineers, and SEO specialists — many of whom are on remote and distributed teams — using async-friendly communication (written specs, recorded walkthroughs, thorough PR descriptions) alongside live collaboration.
Contribute to a culture that values ownership, learning, and continuous improvement.

Who you are:

5+ years of professional experience building modern, high-traffic web applications
Strong expertise in JavaScript and Vue.js or React experience.
Comfortable working with Node.js, particularly in server-side rendering (SSR) environments.
Proven experience optimizing performance for large-scale consumer applications (millions of users).
Hands-on experience improving Core Web Vitals (LCP, FCP, CLS, INP, TTFB).
Strong experience using Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse, memory profiling, and flame graph analysis.
Deep understanding of rendering strategies, hydration cost, code splitting, and tree shaking.
Strong knowledge of browser rendering lifecycle, Virtual DOM performance, and reactivity systems.
Experience implementing CDN, caching, and asset optimization strategies.
Strong understanding of SEO implications related to SSR and rendering decisions.
Experience building maintainable systems supported by automated tests.
Hands-on experience with AI-native/AI-assisted engineering workflows (e.g., AI coding assistants, agentic dev tools) in a professional setting.
Proven experience working effectively on remote and/or distributed teams, including async collaboration across time zones.
Excellent communication skills with a collaborative, ownership-driven mindset.

Nice to have:

Experience in real estate, marketplaces, or other high-scale consumer platforms
Experience tuning Node.js performance in production environments
Familiarity with edge computing or CDN configuration

What you'll get:

Extended benefit offerings including medical/dental/vision, parental leave, life insurance, short- and long-term disability
Paid holidays and paid time off
401K with company match
Discount on home mortgage refinances or purchase

Lower provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.