Frontend Engineer (JavaScript, API)

Role overview

Full-time Frontend Engineer for Tailscale’s next-generation web console. You’ll shape frontend architecture and build identity-adjacent systems (authentication, sessions, secure cross-origin integrations) to support multiple Tailscale products in a unified console.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead frontend architecture for the next-gen console (application structure, routing, state management, long-term maintainability)
• Design and implement cross-origin authentication/session management infrastructure
  • Auth flows, CORS policies, CSRF protections, cookie/session strategies, multi-environment support
• Build and operate a frontend platform that hosts multiple products under a unified development workflow
• Create shared infrastructure, conventions, and design patterns to unify product experiences
• Develop frontend architecture patterns, tooling, and abstractions to help non-frontend engineers build UI components safely and efficiently
• Partner with Product Design to translate complex identity/infrastructure concepts into usable UI
• Collaborate on experimentation and rollout (analytics, A/B testing, feature rollout)

Requirements

• Extensive experience building and maintaining production React applications at scale
• Strong web platform fundamentals: HTTP, browser security boundaries, authentication flows, cookies/storage, CORS, CSRF
• Proven experience building internal platforms/frameworks/shared libraries to help teams ship securely and efficiently
• Experience leading a unified console/platform vision across multiple frontend codebases
• Strong frontend architecture judgment (standardization, abstraction, maintainability)
• Experience designing scalable frontend testing strategies (integration and end-to-end)
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-disciplinary teams (design, growth, infrastructure, developer tooling)
• Strong written/verbal communication and ability to influence technical tradeoffs
• High ownership and autonomy; can identify critical problems and drive solutions amid ambiguity

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with developer tooling and shared component ecosystems for multi-team UI delivery