Senior Frontend Developer

We are hiring a contract-based Senior Frontend Developer for the garden3d creative collective with a focus on West Coast candidates.                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Original job posting link

About garden3d

We are worker owned creative collective, innovating on everything from brands and IRL communities to IoT devices and cross platform apps. We share profit, open source everything, spin out new businesses, and invest in exciting ideas through financial and/or in-kind contributions.

Our client roster includes Google, Stripe, Figma, Hinge, Black Socialists in America, ACLU, Pratt, Parsons, Mozilla, The Nobel Prize, MIT, Gnosis, Etsy & Gagosian.

We’re the software team behind innovative products like The Light Phone & Mill, and we operate a global, decentralized community space collective called Index Space.

We think of our garden3d as collective for creative people, prioritizing a happy, talented, and diverse studio culture. We work on projects that bring value to our world, and we balance deep care for the work we do with a genuine curiosity about life outside of our jobs.

Who we’re looking for:

We're looking for a Senior Frontend Developer who excels at building pixel-perfect websites using modern frontend frameworks. You'll collaborate with our team to build elegant, performant, and visually stunning web experiences. Your work will span a diverse range of client projects, from immersive brand websites to complex web applications, all requiring a keen eye for detail and technical excellence.

This hiring effort will focus on Front-End Developers based in the U.S. West Coast. Candidates in the Pacific Time zone are preferred (LA/SF proximity is a plus). We are also open to candidates located in the Mountain Time zone.

In this role, you’ll work on a variety of client projects to find cost-effective, high-quality, pragmatic solutions to complex problems. Responsibilities will include:

• Collaborating with Technical Lead to meet clients' development needs
• Building and maintaining high-performance web applications with modern frontend frameworks and tools
• Implementing responsive, accessible, and pixel-perfect user interfaces based on design specifications
• Integrating frontend applications with headless CMS platforms, APIs, and third-party services
• Optimizing application performance, including bundle size, load times, and runtime efficiency
• Architecting scalable component libraries and design systems for consistency across projects
• Writing clear documentation for code maintenance and usage
• Participating in project team meetings, including Sprint Planning, daily standups, and retrospectives
• Participating in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to teammates and ensuring adherence to best practices

The person we’re looking for is happy, relaxed and easy to get along with. They’re flexible on anything except conceits that will lower their usually outstanding work quality. They work “smart”, by carefully managing their workflow and staggering features that have dependencies intelligently — they prefer deep work but are OK coming up to the surface now and then for top level / strategic conversations.

We believe people with backgrounds or interests in design, art, music, food or fashion tend to have a well rounded sense of design & quality — so a variety of hobbies or side projects is a big nice to have!

Must Have Competencies:

We’re always pitching for new and exciting technology niches. Some of the areas below are relevant to us!

• 8+ years writing highly performant frontend code, an obsession for 95+ Lighthouse scores
• Expert level experience with Typescript, and one of Next.js, Nuxt, Svelte, Vue
• Extensive experience with headless CMS like Sanity, Contentful, Prismic or more
• Fluency in industry standard PaaS like Vercel, Netlify, Firebase, etc
• Fluency in eCommerce technologies like Shopify (headless & liquid), Stripe, Swell and others
• Experience building accessible, responsive interfaces with attention to performance optimization and SEO best practices
• Strong understanding of modern CSS methodologies (Tailwind, CSS Modules, etc) and animation libraries
• Experience with state management solutions (Redux, Zustand, Pinia) and API integration patterns
• Proficiency with testing frameworks (Jest, Playwright, Cypress) and commitment to writing maintainable, well-documented code
• Experience with design systems and component libraries, working closely with designers to ensure pixel-perfect implementations
• Real-time & performance optimization: experience with WebSockets for live data updates, caching strategies (Redis, CDN-level caching), CDN configuration and optimization (Cloudflare, Fastly), and image optimization techniques including proxies and delivery networks

Nice to Have Competencies:

We’re always pitching for new and exciting technology niches. Some of the areas below are relevant to us!

• WebGL & Canvas expertise: experience building interactive graphics, animations, and visualizations using WebGL, Three.js, or native Canvas API
• Data visualization: creating compelling, interactive data visualizations with libraries like Mapbox, D3.js, Chart.js, or similar tools
• Full-stack development experience: comfortable working across the entire stack, from frontend to backend and database layers
• PostgreSQL expertise: strong experience with database design, query optimization, and managing complex relational data structures
• GraphQL & API design: building and maintaining GraphQL or REST APIs with a focus on performance and developer experience
• Real-time technologies: experience with WebSockets, Server-Sent Events, or similar technologies for building live, interactive features
• Authentication & security: implementing secure authentication flows (OAuth, JWT) and following security best practices
• Client-facing experience: working directly with customers to gather requirements and provide technical solutions
• Product management experience: defining product roadmaps and collaborating closely with stakeholders
• Engineering management experience: leading teams, setting technical direction, and mentoring developers

Compensation

Our pay scale ranges from $100/hr to $130/hr pending seniority (& team leadership experience), and our projects are rarely less than 8 full time weeks at 40 hours per week.

We prefer long standing relationships with highly accountable and communicative team members, so we encourage candidates to expect longer term engagements.

How we interview:

Our interview process starts with a call where you get to meet a few members of our team. From there we’ll ask appropriate candidates to take part in a technical exercise which helps illustrate skill level and comfort.

‍How we work:

We believe that there’s a better balance between the poles of freelancing & full time, and for that reason Sanctuary works differently to most shops:

• Transparency & Ownership: We release out Profit & Loss statements to the community each year, open source our best ideas, and talk business & money with everyone in the company. We’re proud to run our business with integrity, and for that reason we share everything with our team & community.
• **150% Carbon Negative:** Our studio offsets 150% of the carbon we use to do business each year, dated back to our founding in 2015. We turn down work that is not in-line with our morals, and we encourage our peers to do the same. We have been certified climate neutral since 2021.
• **Strong Morals:** Since our founding, we've turned down somewhere between $1mm - $2mm of work that didn't meet our moral standards. (Most of that was DTC brands that can't show a valid sustainability initiative).
• Async & Decentralized: We use tools optimized for calm, thoughtful communication, and opt for async whenever possible. We fight hard to maintain our focus time.
• Remote Friendly: Our company is fluent in remote work, making our workplace more decentralized, and democratized in the process.
• Ideas & Products: In our spare studio time, we work to build our own open source or internal products to diversify & bolster our income. We create amazing technology products for our clients, so why not for the studio?

Important Reminders
Kindly submit a complete and thoughtful application, including relevant links that help verify your work experience and identity. Applications with missing or insufficient information will not move forward in the review process. 

Our team carefully reviews every complete submission, and we truly appreciate the time and effort you put into applying.
Quick tip! For this job posting, sharing websites or portfolios you’ve built is definitely a plus!