Careers at Hex

Senior Frontend Engineer (London)

We’re looking for a super-talented Frontend Engineer, with a background in product and marketing websites, to join our engineering team.

About us
The role

You’ll be working on a range of exciting projects, including websites and digital experiences for startups and household names alike. As part of a cross-functional team, you’ll be developing from the ground up, implementing UI and functionality, creating component libraries, and working with user research, designers, and the clients themselves to create high quality digital experiences.

You'll be working with modern platforms and frameworks such as React and Next.js, Sanity.io, and Payload. You'll also be implementing automated testing through CI pipelines and tools such as Storybook and Vitest. We're looking for someone comfortable making key technical decisions and happy to set technical direction for the products.

If you love creating greenfield web applications that are scalable and performant, with space to make and own your decisions, then this is the role for you.

Who are we?

Hex is an award-winning experience design agency with a diverse group of incredibly talented people from all over the world.  We help organisations who are solving the world’s biggest problems by supporting their sustainability mission. At our heart are talented people, who represent a wealth of experience across tech, creative and business strategy. This gives us a unique understanding of business building and product design, combined with the passion to relentlessly improve.

We’re driven by the collective responsibility to innovate and effect a positive impact on the world, whilst making sure we have fun in the process. We believe safe spaces where everyone can be their authentic selves are the key to a strong team - we welcome and embrace all identities, cultures, and backgrounds.

Where does this job fit into the organisation?

Hex has grown over the past few years from boutique to established digital agency, and with this growth comes exciting opportunities and inspiring clients. We expect you to be brimming with ideas, challenge yourself, to grow and develop, and create beautiful experiences.

Jamie, our Head of Engineering, will be directly responsible for you at Hex. He’ll make sure you have everything you need to be successful in the role, including a comprehensive self development plan, mentoring and regular catch ups.

Outside of Engineering, you’ll be working closely and collaboratively with colleagues of all levels and experts in all functions, including UX & UI design, creative strategy, project management, client services, and marketing and growth.

Salary
£50k - 70k

Depending on experience and skills

About the role
How many projects will I be working on at a time?

We actively work with a range of clients, covering large product-focused work, smaller feature work, and monthly retainers for both established names and marketplace challengers. Some weeks will be entirely focussed on large projects and pitches, whereas others will include getting stuck into smaller briefs and problem-solving for our retained clients.

What is the hardest part of this job?

You will need to be an expert at creative thinking, juggling priorities and working to tight deadlines in a fast-paced industry where things can change with little notice. You'll need to be comfortable planning for the future while simultaneously delivering for the present. There’s a lot of space to learn, grow, and supercharge your career.

As a Senior Engineer, you will:
  • Drive the engineering direction across website projects and digital experiences, with the ability to produce polished work from inception through to completion.
  • Work closely with experts in UX, UI and animation to create accessible, reusable components and modules, and consistent design patterns.
  • Build robust, semantic and accessible front ends for award winning mobile and web applications.
  • Identify technical debt and blockers that slow down the team’s ability to deliver code to production, and partner with our engineering managers to advocate for its improvement.
  • Understand what is possible within budget and timeline, what is not, and when to push the boundaries.
  • Make clear design and development decisions and be able to explain them and their tradeoffs to clients and the wider team.
  • Be comfortable leading on and planning applications, and shipping large features and improvements.
What we’d like to see in you:
  • 3+ years experience in an engineering role
  • Extensive agency or start-up experience as an engineer, ideally having worked closely with different types of clients in a range of different industries.
  • Strong, demonstrable experience in TypeScript, HTML, and CSS, and ideally React or Vue.
  • Experience creating reusable components and hooks with a maintainable, scalable architecture.
  • A good understanding of design tokens, design systems, component libraries, and component testing.
  • A deep appreciation for semantic HTML and accessibility that you’ll keep at the forefront of your mind while developing UI.
  • Some high-level exposure to giving & receiving feedback with regard for both the emotional and technical sides.
  • A high level of comfort with a Git-centric workflow, including continuous deployment and solid tooling.
  • The ability to lead by example, seek to understand through active listening and questioning, actively address problems you identify and assume responsibility for your work.
  • High standards when it comes to output / execution with a meticulous attention to detail.
  • A cool head and able to work under pressure and to deadlines.
  • Proactive, clear, and timely communication, not afraid to bring new ideas to improve the development process and the agency as a whole.
Within 1 month, you'll:
  • Learn about Hex and how we work.
  • Have one-on-one's and pairing sessions with the people you'll be working closely with and get to know your Hex peers.
  • Dive into the world of the clients and products that you’ll be working with.
  • Plan and contribute several working features to a global non-profit marketing website, and  commit and deploy them to production.
Within 3 months, you'll:
  • Establish strong async communication rhythms with your peers and leaders, practicing transparency and visibility in your progress against areas of focus.
  • Gain a more robust understanding of the needs of your clients and products.
  • Understand and contribute to our internal utilities, toolset and products.
  • Solicit feedback from your peers, including other engineers and teammates in your product team, and support your teammates through thoughtful feedback.
  • Have deeply contributed to the launch of a global non-profit's marketing website, and be working on post-launch features and fixes.
  • Be contributing ideas and feedback to internal initiatives, and planning initiatives of your own.
  • Feel your experience has rapidly grown and that you're levelling up as an Engineer.
Within 6 months, you'll:
  • Elevate the work of the team and become a subject matter expert in your products.
  • Make significant impact for our team by being a key contributor to an engineering led initiative to improve our codebase or processes to enable us to scale better as an organisation.
  • Fortify relationships with cross functional team members as well as broaden your connections across the organisation.
  • Participate in the interview process for other engineer candidates.
  • Have at least two large projects under your belt, plus numerous contributions to smaller projects.
  • Feel entirely confident taking on a large project build from pre-sales, to discovery, build and launch, and beyond.
About our team

Of everything we've ever built at Hex, we are most proud of our team.

We believe that empowered and engaged team members do their best work. We’ll be giving you the tools you need to succeed and will be looking to you for suggestions to improve in your role, and in every aspect of building a company. We want to make sure we find inventive ways to collaborate, debate, and learn from each other.

Hex has a Farringdon based office for flexible, hybrid work. We also have several spaces for collaboration, such as meeting rooms, sofas, and focus booths. The office is provided as a benefit to help facilitate socialising and collaboration, with the expectation of using it at least one day a week on Monday.

Joining our ambitious and passionate team is one of many great perks at Hex. We provide a tailored development and training plan and a yearly training budget of £1,000 to foster your ongoing learning through books, courses and conferences. We'll provide a MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip (or your choice of equivalent laptop). We also offer 25 days holiday standard, plus 1 extra day for each anniversary you have with us.

Applying

Even if you don’t meet all of the qualifications above, please apply anyway! This description is a guide on what we think would be the perfect candidate, but is not a list of requirements. Everyone is unique and will bring skills and experience we haven’t thought of.

When applying, please include a CV or short listing of your skills and experience. A LinkedIn profile would also be fine. If you would like to, a cover letter explaining why you’d enjoy working in this role and at Hex would be great, though it’s not required and won’t impact your application. Once we receive your application we’ll get back to you with next steps.

Not the right role for you? Get in touch and tell us about yourself. We're always on the lookout for brilliant minds in all roles and experience levels.

We’re devoted to building a team of people with diverse backgrounds and lifestyles. We believe our success is driven by the unique perspectives, ideas and contributions that come from a varied team. We are all responsible for bringing on people from all walks of life. Driving equality empowers our team, enables us to innovate, and helps us maintain a more inclusive environment. We don’t discriminate against employees or applicants based on gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, religion, age, race, military/veteran status, citizenship, pregnancy status, or any other differences. If we can do anything to provide a better interview, i.e. accommodate a disability, then please let us know.

Apply now

please email your CV and cover letter

Maxim Robinson
UX Designer

Meet Max

Max worked on this project.

Connect with him on LinkedIn and ask him anything!

Meet Max

Max worked on this project.

Connect with him on LinkedIn and ask him anything!