Senior Product Engineer (Frontend)

About Buffer

At Buffer, we make social media and brand building software for small businesses, creators, and individuals. Our mission is to provide essential tools to help small businesses get off the ground and grow. Through exceptional customer service and uplifting content, we help our customers believe they can succeed and do good along the way.

We’re a fully distributed team, and we’ve always aimed to do things a little differently at Buffer. Since the early days, we’ve had a focus on building one of the most unique and fulfilling workplaces by rethinking a lot of traditional practices. We also default to transparency, so you can read all about our metrics, and our successes and failures along the way on our Transparency Dashboard.

We hire and work from all over the world. Please note that we do travel to work together in-person once or twice per year, and those events are highly encouraged to build deeper connections among our small team.

We're united by Buffer's values, and we celebrate our unique differences. We strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment and are building a culture where underrepresented groups are welcome, and can flourish.

About the role

We’re looking for a senior frontend engineer to join the Content Creation team and help shape how people create and plan content with Buffer. You’ll take the lead on building core parts of our content creation experience, like the new iteration of our composer, AI-powered features, recommendation engine and content planning tools.

We need someone with strong product instincts, a sharp eye for design, and experience building complex, interactive UIs. You care about how things feel as much as how they work — thoughtful interactions, polished details, and a UI that holds up under real use. You'll collaborate closely with a designer, product manager, and other engineers to explore ideas, shape features, and ship high-quality work.

We're a small, collaborative team that builds with our customers in mind. We iterate directly alongside them, care deeply about clarity and quality, and do things well — but we also move quickly and keep feedback loops tight. You'll have space to lead, bring your perspective, and help level up how we approach frontend work — both within the Content team and across engineering.

What you’ll do

• Lead the development of core parts of our content creation experience — composer, rich text editor, content planning tools, and AI-assisted workflows.

• Shape how we build UI by evolving our internal design system (Popcorn), refining shared patterns, and keeping our interfaces consistent, accessible, and delightful.

• Collaborate closely with a designer, product manager, and other engineers to explore ideas, break down work, and iterate on features in tight feedback loops.

• Guide frontend architecture — from improving state management and component structure to identifying opportunities to simplify and scale.

• Take shared ownership of product quality and system health. You'll participate in our on-call rotation — all engineers take a 24/7 week-long shift roughly once a quarter. You'll also contribute to the ongoing work that keeps our systems running smoothly and continuously improving, like fixing bugs, addressing security vulnerabilities, and other improvements

• Contribute to shaping our team’s engineering culture by sharing knowledge, reviewing code, and helping us all get better over time.

Helpful skills and experience

• You have solid experience building interactive, user-facing applications with modern web tech — we use React, TypeScript, and GraphQL, but we care more about your ability to reason well and learn quickly than a specific stack.

• You’ve worked on complex interfaces before, maybe a rich text editor or some kind of interactive canvas — and you enjoy solving tricky UX problems with a balance of performance, structure, and finesse.

• You have strong product judgment and a good sense of taste. You notice the small things, care about the feel of an interface, and bring a high bar to the UI details that shape user experience.

• You’ve led significant frontend initiatives or projects, bringing clarity and direction to complex problems and guiding work from early exploration through to delivery.

• You have a personal stake in the world of content creation, maybe you’ve run a newsletter, built an audience on social media, or regularly share your own work online. You’ve used Buffer before and care about the experience of planning, creating, and publishing content.

• You’re comfortable navigating ambiguity. You bring clarity, ask good questions, and help move ideas forward even when not everything is figured out yet.

• You thrive in remote, async environments. You communicate clearly, support your teammates, and don’t wait for permission to make progress.

• You’re product-minded and user-oriented — you think beyond the ticket, consider edge cases and user experience, and bring a strong sense of ownership to your work.

• You’re comfortable working with backend code when needed, and you understand how frontend decisions connect to the bigger picture.

• You’re fluent with AI tools and use them to work with more leverage and level up your own efficiency.

• You’ve likely been doing this for 7+ years, but depth matters more to us than a specific number.

Our tech stack

• We use React and TypeScript for our web frontends

• We have internal design system called Popcorn that we started developing last year, it is built with Radix primitives, CSS modules, Storybook and our own system of design tokens

• We are in the process of migrating to GraphQL, we use Apollo Client in our web application

• We write automated tests with jest, react testing library (for integration tests) and Playwright (for e2e tests)

• On the backend, we use NodeJS, TypeScript and MongoDB

• We are running our services on AWS with Kubernetes. We follow a micro-services architecture and are currently moving our services into a central shared monorepo.

Interview process

Here's what our hiring process for this role is like.

1. Application. When submitting your application and resume, tell us why you want to join Buffer and take your time. This is your chance to make a strong first impression.

2. Hiring manager interview. Chat with the hiring manager for your role to understand what it takes to work at Buffer. This is an opportunity for both sides to get to know each other and determine whether our expectations align. Good candidates prepare questions, use our product, and clearly articulate what they look for in their role.

3. Async assignment. 30-minute asynchronous assignment to help us understand how you'd collaborate with the team.

4. Technical interviews. 1-2 interviews focused on system design, technical leadership, and engineering craft. No whiteboarding, live coding, or trick questions. This gives you a chance to meet a few engineers from Buffer.

5. Collaboration period. Work with us on a real project for about 10 hours (we'll pay you for your time). Expect async Slack communication, Zoom meetings, pairing sessions, and heads-down coding. You'll also meet more team members, including product managers and designers.

6. Final interview. You will have the opportunity to meet with Joel Gascoigne, our CEO. This is a great chance for you to gain a deeper understanding of Buffer's strategy, values, and work processes.

7. Offer. We wrap it up with an offer and discuss the final details. We would align on the last bits before we make you part of the Buffer team. 💛

At Buffer, we value diversity of experience, and we understand that comes in many forms. We’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team. So, if your experience is close to what we’re looking for, please consider applying.

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