Senior Frontend Developer - Contractor

As a Senior Associate Engineer, you will join a highly motivated, experienced team building web and mobile applications while providing strategy consulting for Appnovation's clients. With a strong bias toward frontend craft, you will bring modern React and Next.js to life and turn business ideas into polished, production-ready interfaces. We are looking for engineers who pair sharp technical instincts with a consulting and solution-focused mindset, people who can sit with a client, understand the problem, and ship the right answer.

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and build frontend systems using Next.js 15 (App Router, RSC, SSR/SSG), React 19, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS.
• Build and maintain component libraries with shadcn/ui, including theming via CSS variables and multi-locale support (en, zh-hk, zh-cn).
• Contribute to the React Native (Expo) mobile app, sharing a content layer with web through an internal UI package.
• Integrate frontend with a Strapi v5 headless CMS and a Flask/Python API, working with AWS Cognito for auth and DynamoDB for application data.
• Translate design systems and product requirements into reusable, scalable interfaces.
• Partner with clients to shape technical direction and deliver enterprise-grade applications.
• Champion engineering best practices across code quality, testing, and continuous delivery.
• Collaborate closely with designers, backend engineers, and product managers in a cross-functional environment.

What we are looking for

Must-Have:

• 8+ years of experience as a software developer or in a comparable engineering role.
• Strong experience building frontend architectures with Next.js (App Router, RSC, SSR/SSG), React, and Tailwind CSS.
• Proficiency with modern JavaScript and TypeScript (TypeScript 5 preferred).
• Experience building cross-platform mobile apps with React Native and Expo (Expo Router, file-based navigation).
• Hands-on experience with relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, SQLite, or equivalents).
• Experience integrating with headless CMS platforms, ideally Strapi v5, including Draft & Publish workflows and i18n.
• Experience with AWS services in production (Cognito, DynamoDB, S3, ECS, ECR).
• Experience with end-to-end and component testing using Playwright, Cucumber (BDD), and Storybook, alongside unit testing and TDD practices.
• Comfort with continuous delivery tooling and practices (GitHub, Vercel deployments, agile workflows).
• Experience designing, orchestrating, and deploying container-based solutions with Docker, and infrastructure-as-code with Terraform.
• Working knowledge of agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban) and operating in a DevOps environment.
• Strong written and spoken English.
• Availability to commit to a full-time, six-month contractor engagement.

Nice-to-Have:

• Experience with real-time features using Socket.io.
• Experience integrating AI services such as ElevenLabs for voice generation.
• Experience with Strapi Cloud deployments.
• Experience working in WSL2 environments.
• Prior consulting experience.

Who you are

• You think in systems. You build for scale, automation, and long-term operability, not just the problem in front of you.
• You hold a high bar for code quality, performance, and security, and you raise it as you go.
• You bring sharp analytical instincts and sound judgment to ambiguous problems.
• You lead with a customer-first mindset and treat client relationships as partnerships worth investing in.
• You communicate clearly and influence effectively across every level of an organization.
• You thrive in fast-moving, high-performance environments where priorities shift and the work matters.
• You step into the unfamiliar willingly, and you pick up new concepts, tools, and business models quickly.