Hire frontend developers who plan for the worst screen
Our engineers have built a live trivia board for a thousand players and a real-time repair-shop calendar. They work in your repo, and you interview them before anyone starts.
What you are getting
4 things that decide this
- 01Senior engineers only, with interfaces already running in production under real-time load and on shared, contested data.
- 02You interview every engineer before they join, using your own process and your own bar.
- 03They build the states a demo skips: loading, empty, offline and error, before a user ever files a bug about one.
- 04You own the code from the first commit. If the fit is wrong, we replace the engineer.
The job behind the job title
A pretty interface is the easy 80%. The other 20% is what happens when the network is slow or the data has not fully arrived.
On Elevent, scores and answers sync across a thousand players at once over WebSockets. A dropped connection cannot be allowed to desync one player's board from everyone else's. On ZhoopZhoop, a shop's booking calendar updates in real time while an AI voice agent books into the same slots. The screen has to reconcile two writers instead of one. On SmartREI, an investor and a realtor read the same deal from different dashboards, and the numbers have to agree.
Different products, one repeated skill. Deciding what the screen shows before the data has fully arrived, and keeping that decision consistent under load.
What they take off the team that inherits it
A performance budget with numbers
A bundle-size and load-time ceiling agreed up front, checked on every build, not a hope that things stay fast.
Every state, not only the happy one
Loading, empty, offline and error states built as the screen is written, so QA finds fewer surprises later.
Server and client rendering, chosen on purpose
What renders on the server, what hydrates on the client, and why. Not a default nobody revisited.
Real-time views that reconcile
Live updates merged into cached data so two people editing the same record see the same result.
Accessibility built in, not bolted on
Keyboard paths, focus handling and labels done as the component is written. Retrofitting it later costs several times more.
- Bundle sizePer route, checked in CI
- First loadTime to interactive, on a real device
- Rendering choiceServer or client, stated
- Failure statesLoading, empty, offline, error
- Ship or blockA number, not a feeling
A budget is only real if it can fail a build. This is the shape ours takes.
Interfaces that held up under real load
“They will treat your vision like their own and build it that way.”
Ron Klabunde · Founder, SmartREI
How hiring works
- 01
Show us the screen that worries you
A free call about the product, the traffic it sees and the part of the interface nobody wants to touch. If the fix is really a backend problem, we say so.
- 02
Meet the engineers
We put forward people who have shipped an interface under real load, and you interview them against your own bar. No is a complete answer.
- 03
They embed
Your repository, your standups, your pull request rules. One of our engineers is named on the work and stays on the same product.
- 04
They hand over
Components with their states documented, and a written performance budget so the next developer knows the ceiling. Where a team would rather we kept maintaining it, we do that under a service level we agree. The first 2 months of support and maintenance are free, with every build.
Stack
Frontend
Styling and UI
Real time and behind it
Bring us the screen that breaks under load
Show us the interface that gets slow, or wrong, once real traffic hits it. The scoping call is free, and you will leave with a read on what is actually wrong.
01How is hiring a frontend developer different from posting the role myself?
You get an engineer who has already shipped an interface under real load, plus a company accountable if the fit is wrong. A job posting hands you a pile of resumes and the vetting risk. If our engineer is not right, we replace them, which is not a conversation you can have with a direct hire six weeks in.
02Do they build the whole product, or just the interface?
Frontend, and the API contract it depends on when that boundary matters. Several of our engineers pair frontend work with a Node.js or FastAPI backend. A slow screen is often a slow query wearing a UI.
03How do they fit into our code review process?
They open pull requests in your repository and follow your rules for approvals, tests and merges. Your team reviews their code, which is also the fastest way for you to judge the hire in the first fortnight.
04Can they work on a codebase we did not build cleanly?
Yes, and most of this work is exactly that. They read what exists, agree a performance budget against the current numbers, and ship something small first. A rewrite proposed in week one is a red flag from any vendor.
05What decides whether something renders on the server or the client?
The page's own needs, not a framework default. Content that search or an answer engine should read renders on the server. Interaction that only matters after a click waits for the client. Your engineer states the choice and why, so it is a decision on record, not an accident.
06How is a frontend engagement priced?
By how much interface there is and how tangled the current state management is, not by a rate you compare in isolation. A component library with documented states prices very differently from years of untested screens. Scoping calls are free. Where we must read an existing codebase to answer properly, a paid two-week diagnostic turns the estimate into a fixed price.
