Job Description
Job Description
PRINCIPAL FRONT-END ENGINEER
Thresh Consulting - Strategy in Action for the AI Era
Salary: $210,000-$230,000 + up to 30% performance-based bonus and equity potential
Location: NYC, Chicago or Denver Area Preferred | Open to Hybrid w/Travel
ABOUT THRESH
Thresh Consulting is a modern digital consulting firm built for the AI era-where strategy, execution, and craft come together to deliver real outcomes with speed. Our specialty is helping organizations design, build, and scale digital products that create exceptional customer experiences and drive measurable value.
ROLE OVERVIEW
The Principal Front-End Engineer is a hands-on technical leader who thrives in the trenches: someone who loves solving complex problems with code, mentoring other engineers, and shipping production-quality work at velocity.
You'll spend 70% of your time building-architecting design systems, migrating legacy platforms, and defining the technical standards that elevate the entire team. The other 30%? Leading technical workstreams, unblocking teammates, and partnering directly with client engineering leadership to execute their most critical initiatives.
This role is for an engineer who wants to stay close to the code, work on hard problems, and be the technical go-to for a client engineering leader who has too much on their plate.
We expect you to be an expert in AI-assisted front-end development-specifically Claude Code, Cursor, and modern tooling-capable of scaffolding components, migrating design systems, and moving from Figma to production code at a pace that redefines what 'fast' means.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
AI-NATIVE FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT
- Integrate AI tooling into the development cycle, leading by example to show how tools like Claude Code or Antigravity can rapidly build production-quality components, migrate legacy systems, and prototype complex features
- Define and implement design system tokenization strategies that enable AI-powered Figma-to-code workflows, positioning clients for the next generation of front-end development.
- Establish Thresh's front-end development stack and patterns, ensuring the team spends time on innovation and business logic rather than boilerplate.
- Demonstrate what modern front-end velocity looks like, staying up to date on the latest tool launches to ensure Thresh continually sets the standard for best-in-class delivery.
TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE & CUSTOM PROBLEM-SOLVING
- Architect and implement complex front-end solutions that balance speed, maintainability, and scalability.
- Solve the hardest technical problems on the engagement-the ones that would otherwise block the team or require escalation to client leadership.
- Bridge front-end and back-end when needed-you're not afraid to dig into APIs, data pipelines, or integrations to unblock your team or deliver end-to-end value.
- Collaborate with designers to understand workflow constraints and translate design intent into elegant, performant code that respects real-world technical limitations.
- Define engineering standards and reusable patterns that elevate quality across the engagement and become assets for future Thresh projects.
ENGINEERING MENTORSHIP & TEAM LEADERSHIP
- Lead and mentor a team of Thresh engineers on client engagements, ensuring they're learning, growing, and delivering at a high standard.
- Conduct architecture reviews and code reviews focused on patterns, logic, and system design
- Champion continuous learning in a landscape where AI tools advance daily-ensuring the team is always experimenting with new capabilities and staying ahead of the curve rather than catching up to it.
CLIENT PARTNERSHIP & TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP
- Partner directly with client engineering leadership (VPs, Directors, Architects) as a trusted technical peer who can take high-leverage work off their plate and execute with minimal oversight.
- Present technical strategies and architectural decisions to stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
- Operate in a 'recommend ? approve ? execute' model-shaping the vision, seeking alignment, then delivering with speed and quality.
- Build long-term trust with client teams by consistently shipping excellent work, unblocking bottlenecks, and raising the technical bar.
WHY THRESH
- Competitive compensation with bonus eligibility.
- Healthcare benefits and 401(k) with company match.
- Opportunity to work on modern, high-impact products utilizing cutting-edge AI-assisted development tools.
- Clear growth path and mentorship from senior engineering leaders.
- A culture that values craft, clarity, and teamwork.
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WHAT YOU BRING
- 10-15+ years of professional front-end engineering experience with deep expertise in modern frameworks and design system implementation.
- Hands-on technical contributor: You still ship features, build components, and write production code-this isn't a purely advisory role.
- Proven ability to architect complex systems under tight timelines, balancing rapid delivery with maintainability, performance, and scalability.
- Experience mentoring and leading engineers, but you're more comfortable in code reviews than performance reviews-you lead through technical excellence, not org charts.
- Comfort with ambiguity and custom problem-solving-you thrive on challenges that don't have Stack Overflow answers and enjoy figuring out novel solutions.
- Full-stack curiosity-while front-end is your home, you're not intimidated by backend APIs, databases, or infrastructure when needed to unblock the team.
- Intellectual curiosity and bias toward experimentation-you're always exploring new tools, techniques, and ways to deliver value faster.
- Client-facing communication skills-you can explain technical trade-offs clearly to non-engineers and build trust with senior stakeholders.