Senior Frontend Engineer | React & Next.js | AI Transformation
“This is not a role where you build what’s handed to you. This is where you define what great looks like.”
The Opportunity
You are stepping into one of Big Wave Digital’s favourite partner clients. A globally operating tech business already performing strongly and now moving into a genuine AI transformation phase.
Not buzzwords. Not slide decks. Real product change.
AI is being embedded into how users discover, onboard, and interact. And frontend is where that transformation is felt first.
As Mark Twain once said: “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
This team has started. Now they need someone to take it somewhere exceptional.
Your Role in That
You own the customer facing experience.
The front door. First impression. Onboarding. Identity. Acquisition. Every interaction that determines whether a user becomes a customer, and whether they stay.
This is not about building UI.
It is about shaping how a product feels, performs, and converts at scale, and increasingly how it thinks.
Where AI Comes In
This is not “add a chatbot and call it AI.”
This is about:
- Intelligent onboarding flows
- Adaptive interfaces
- AI driven user journeys
- Removing friction before users even feel it
Or as Doc Brown put it in Back to the Future: “When this baby hits 88 miles per hour you’re gonna see some serious sh*t.”
That is the level of shift happening here.
You will be right in the middle of it, translating AI capability into real, usable, high performance frontend experiences.
What You Will Own
This is a high trust, high impact role. You set the bar.
- Frontend quality across all customer facing touchpoints
- Technical direction across React.js and Next.js environments
- How AI features actually show up in the user experience
- Performance, accessibility, and responsiveness at scale
- Architecture for real world conditions, not perfect ones
You will be hands on where it matters and strategic where it counts.
The Craft
This role is for someone who notices the details others miss.
- Core Web Vitals are a baseline, not a goal
- Accessibility is built in, not bolted on
- Interfaces work on slow devices, poor networks, and edge cases
- Layout shift, latency, animation smoothness: you care about all of it
You have likely done this before at scale, building React and Next.js applications that hold up in the real world, not just in demos.
What Makes This Different
Most frontend roles sit downstream. This one sits at the point of impact.
- Influence product and design decisions directly
- Work alongside UX and Product, not behind them
- Set standards others follow
- Help define how AI integrates into the frontend experience
No direct reports. But a genuine seat at the table.
The Kind of Engineer This Suits
You care about frontend as a craft. Not just how it looks, but how it performs, how it feels, how it converts.
You have:
- Built production apps in React.js and Next.js at scale
- Improved performance in real environments
- Delivered accessible, responsive interfaces properly
- Worked across the full device and network spectrum
- Partnered with design and product to shape experiences
And now you are thinking about:
- How AI enhances user interaction
- How to remove friction entirely
- How to build interfaces that feel fast, intelligent, and intuitive
The Environment
High energy. Fast decisions. Strong engineers.
Sydney based. 5 days in the office. Real collaboration. Real time problem solving. No layers slowing things down.
Salary
$200,000 + super + bonus
About Big Wave Digital
This role is exclusively represented by Big Wave Digital. One of Sydney’s most established specialists in tech, AI, and digital recruitment.
Deep networks. Long standing relationships. A track record of placing engineers into roles where they actually make an impact.
If this feels like your kind of role, you will know pretty quickly.
Contact: keiran@bigwavedigital.com.au