Principal FrontEnd Engineer

NOTE: This is a FULLY remote role, but the candidate must be within EMEA to collaborate with their team, peers, and internal customers. You do not have to be in the specific city shown in this listing, but please only apply if you are physically based within EMEA. Trusted by 20,000+ property managers worldwide, Hostaway is an industry leading AI‑powered vacation rental management platform designed for professional short‑term rental operators. Hostaway brings everything together for greater efficiency and faster growth. Profitable, high‑growth, and the first short‑term rental Property Management System unicorn 🦄. Join us at our most exciting stage yet Learn more about our recent valuation and story here. As Principal Frontend Engineer, you will define and drive the organization‑wide frontend vision—shaping our design system, developer experience, accessibility standards, and frontend architecture. You'll partner with Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to ensure our platform scales seamlessly while empowering teams to deliver user experiences that set a new standard for quality. Responsibilities - Define and evolve the frontend architectural vision: design systems, micro‑frontends, developer tooling, and long‑term scalability. - Lead cross‑organization frontend initiatives, influencing multiple teams and aligning technical direction with product strategy. - Establish and champion standards for accessibility, performance, and usability across the company but specifically our front‑end community. - Mentor and grow technical leaders, raising the bar for frontend engineering excellence. - Partner with Product, Design, and Engineering to deliver cohesive, scalable, and customer‑centric solutions. - Identify and drive tech debt remediation to ensure frontend scalability and maintainability. - Influence executive‑level decisions on frontend technology strategy. Job Requirements - 10+ years in frontend engineering, with proven architectural leadership. - Deep expertise in React, Node.js, TypeScript, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. - Led large‑scale frontend transformations—such as micro‑frontend migrations, monolith decomposition, framework modernisation, or design system overhauls—that impacted multiple teams and required coordinated organisational change. - Strong knowledge of frontend performance optimisation, accessibility (a11y), testing at all layers (unit, component, system). - Skilled in modern build and release tooling (Webpack, Vite, CI/CD). - Experience integrating design workflows (Figma, tokens, component libraries). - Exceptional ability to influence across functions (Engineering, Product, Design). - Experience leading micro‑frontend migrations or frontend platform refactors. - Experience working in cloud environments (AWS, GCP). - Strong understanding of distributed systems architecture and their frontend implications—including state management across services, handling eventual consistency, error boundaries for service failures, and frontend observability. - Proven track record of leveraging AI tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, LLMs) to accelerate development velocity while maintaining code quality. - Advocates for AI adoption across teams, establishes guardrails for AI‑assisted development, and fosters a culture of experimentation with emerging AI‑powered workflows. What success looks like - Frontend platform scales seamlessly across domains and teams. - Consistent design system adoption and strong developer experience (DX). - Accessibility and performance are embedded as non‑negotiable standards. - Teams feel empowered to move fast without compromising quality. - Frontend engineering contributes directly to product differentiation and customer delight. - Customer feedback loops inform technical decisions—hosting regular session‑replay reviews, translating user pain points into backlog priorities, and using qualitative data to validate architectural choices. What we offer - Competitive Compensation: We offer competitive pay based on market rates in the country of the applicant. - 100% Remote: Enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere within your country of residence—be it a co‑working space, your home office, or even your dining room table. Th