Senior Front-End Engineer
Location: Hybrid – two days per week in the MOD offices in the South East
Contract: 12-month FTC with full company benefits
Clearance: Must hold active SC clearance and have UK government / public sector experience
We are unable to consider candidates who don’t have active SC.
The Company
At Amber Labs, we’re a cutting-edge UK and European technology consultancy that empowers autonomy, promotes experimentation, and drives rapid learning to deliver exceptional value to our clients. Collaboration sits at the heart of our culture — every team member, regardless of role, works together to minimise risk and accelerate delivery. Our teams consist of highly skilled engineers, designers, analysts, and consultants dedicated to building world-class digital services for government and enterprise clients.
About the Role
We’re seeking an experienced Senior Front-End Engineer to lead the development, modification, and maintenance of the front-end elements that users interact with across our government service platforms.
You’ll work in multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with designers, developers, and user researchers to deliver accessible, performant, and standards-compliant services that meet the needs of real users and align with government digital standards.
This role is about setting the bar for front-end quality, defining best practices, ensuring accessibility and performance, and applying modern development techniques. You’ll champion progressive enhancement, responsive design, and usability across multiple browsers and devices.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead front-end development across multiple digital service projects.
- Build accessible, responsive user interfaces that meet GDS accessibility and usability standards.
- Ensure products are built with modern web development techniques and principles.
- Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, including UX designers, back-end developers, and testers.
- Maintain high code quality through code reviews, testing, and documentation.
- Optimise web performance and maintain browser/device compatibility.
- Mentor junior developers and promote a culture of continuous improvement.
- Contribute to design system evolution and reusable component libraries.
Key Skills & Experience
- Proven experience as a front-end developer in production and prototype environments.
- Strong proficiency in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript (including Node.js, ReactJS, ExpressJS, Mongoose).
- Experience with templating and UI frameworks such as Nunjucks, Freemarker, Bootstrap, LESS, and SASS.
- Working knowledge of CI/CD tooling such as Git, GitLab CI, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, and Artifactory.
- Deep understanding of accessibility, progressive enhancement, and performance optimisation.
- Experience building services that perform efficiently across multiple devices and browsers.
- Strong understanding of UX principles and user-centred design.
- Experience working in Agile delivery teams.
Clearance Requirement
- Must hold active SC clearance
- We are unable to consider candidates requiring visa sponsorship at this time.
Benefits
- Competitive salary and performance-based bonus structure.
- Opportunity to work on impactful government digital services.
- Hybrid and flexible working arrangements.
- Private medical insurance (Aviva).
- Company pension plan (Nest).
- 25 days annual leave plus UK bank holidays.
- Access to Perkbox – employee discounts, perks, and wellbeing resources.
- Inclusive and collaborative company culture that values experimentation and innovation.
- Choice of device – PC or Mac.
