Staff Frontend Engineer / Frontend Architect (m/f/d)

Is "AI-first" real here, or a buzzword? It's driven by our CPTO and part of the career ladder for every engineer. Your mandate is to take it from individual productivity to organization-wide practice.

Two legacy frontends on Java and .NET – isn't that painful? That's exactly the mandate: unify them, and how is your call. Why eCommerce search? Because agentic commerce is where AI meets real purchase decisions – on our platform that's 2,000+ shops and €160+ billion in GMV a year.

About us

We are one of the leading Product Discovery Platforms for European eCommerce . Our search, navigation and recommendations handle billions of shopper queries every year — driving a combined GMV of more than €160 billion across our customers. These include Intersport, Spar, Douglas and more than 2,000 further B2B and B2C eCommerce companies across Europe.

For over 20 years we have been an essential part of the complex eCommerce landscape, and with our AI-powered Product Discovery Experience (PDX) we are now entering the next phase — as a Private-Equity-owned company (Genui) , under a new McKinsey-shaped management team, with a clear growth and EBITDA plan. Offices in Pforzheim, Berlin, Munich and Stockholm.

Your tasks

Why this role exists Our two products run two React frontends with very different technical roots. We need a vision, an architect, and an owner — someone who will unify them into a single, efficient system, build the shared design system on top, and enable product managers and designers to prototype and ship production-grade UI themselves with AI tooling. Incrementally, without a big-bang rewrite, and while both products keep shipping.

Your mission

What you'll do

• Define and drive the target frontend architecture across both React products – one consistent, efficient React-based system, migrated step by step
• Build and own our shared design system: tokens, component library and Web Components for embeddable shop UI, tightly aligned with Product Design
• Create an AI-first prototyping and contribution framework – design system, AI coding tools, guardrails, automated review and CI – so product managers and designers can prototype and contribute production-grade UI
• Stay hands-on: write a significant share of the critical code, set standards, and pair with and level up our frontend engineers
• Work with a clear operating split: after architecture-focused first stints, spend around 80% of your time hands-on coding and 20% on architecture, design-system leadership and enablement

What success looks like

• After 90 days: frontend audit of both products done, target architecture and migration roadmap agreed, design-system tokens and core components live, and the first prototype built and shipped by a product manager or designer on the new framework
• After 12 months: both products run on the shared design system, the frontend rework shows measurable efficiency gains, and product and design prototype independently as a routine – frontend is no longer the bottleneck

Your profile

• Stack you'll shape: React, TypeScript, Web Components, design tokens, Storybook, AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, MCP-based tooling)

Your profile

Must-have

• Expert-level React and TypeScript, proven in complex production SaaS frontends
• A real AI-first engineering practice: you use AI coding tools and agents daily and have built workflows or frameworks that others use – not just "I use Copilot"
• Design-system architecture: you've built or led a design system (tokens, component library, Storybook or similar) that was adopted across multiple teams or products
• Web Components (Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, embedding in third-party environments) plus a frontend architecture track record: you've modernized or migrated a frontend stack at least once, ideally several times
• 6+ years in frontend or software engineering, including 3+ years at Staff, Lead or Architect level – setting technical direction across teams, not just within your own
• Hands-on today: you write production code yourself – this is not a concept-only architect position
• Business-fluent English (C1); no formal degree required, your track record counts

Nice-to-have

• Technical leadership without line management: you've led a SaaS frontend team through a major technology change
• Meta-frameworks such as Next.js and/or Astro – and a clear view on when to use which
• Design-to-code and prototyping tooling: Figma workflows, design-token pipelines, AI UI generation (v0, Claude Code, Cursor, MCP-based tooling)
• eCommerce, search or product discovery frontends (search UIs, embeddable shop widgets)
• React on non-JavaScript backends (Java/Spring, .NET); Fable/Feliz or Ant Design
• Good German language skills

Bonus Points

Who thrives here

• Builders who ship code themselves and lead by example
• Pragmatic simplifiers: incremental migration over big-bang rewrites, no over-engineering
• Change agents with strong opinions, weakly held – able to transform an organization without burning it out
• Enablers who enjoy making product managers and designers productive and treat them as peers

Probably not for you if you'd rather produce architecture concepts than running code, want to go deep on one product and leave the cross-product system to others, or are looking for a people-management role.

We offer

• Team: Product & Technology organization of around 25 people, led by our CPTO, working in a product trio model with product and design
• Location: Berlin; Munich, Pforzheim or Stockholm possible – hybrid with 2–3 office days per week; occasional travel (
• Start: as soon as possible

THE JOY OF WORKING WITH US

What we offer

• Real ownership with executive backing: you shape the frontend of two products end to end. You report to our VP Engineering; our CPTO is the executive sponsor of this role – both agree the target architecture and migration roadmap with you, and the CPTO reviews your 90-day goals and holds your final interview. A company-level priority, not a side project
• AI-first as a leadership priority, with the tooling budget to match: Claude Code, Cursor or whatever makes you fastest
• Impact without switching to management: a Staff/Principal IC track on our career ladder toward Principal/Distinguished – with the option to move into engineering management later if you want to
• A product trio culture: engineering, product and design as co-owners, outcomes over outputs
• Competitive compensation that reflects the Staff level of this role
• Training and conference budget, 30 days of vacation, modern equipment, mobility offers and a company pension plan
• Hybrid work with 2–3 office days per week in Berlin, Munich, Pforzheim or Stockholm

How we hire

Remote, with feedback within 48 hours after every step:

1. 30-minute intro call with our Recruiter Mirko

2. 60-minute technical interview with our VP Engineering (your future manager) and an engineering lead: one frontend modernization you led, your design-system story, and how you use AI day to day

3. Case study: a hands-on part (AI tools explicitly welcome – walk us through how you used them) and a 45-minute architecture session

4. Team panel and a 45-minute conversation with our CPTO – optionally on site

FAQ

Is this a people-management role? No. It's a senior individual-contributor role: you lead through architecture, standards and enablement, without direct reports.Incremental, not big-bang.

Can I work fully remote? No – the role is hybrid with 2–3 office days per week at one of our offices.

Apply

Send us your CV or LinkedIn profile plus links to work you're proud of (GitHub, a design system, a talk, a blog post) – and tell us in three sentences how you use AI in your daily engineering work. No cover letter needed.

Your contact: Mirko Duus

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Quelle: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), Tabelle; dl-de/by-2-0; eigene Berechnung