Lead Front End Developer

Contract type: Permanent
Location: Edinburgh, Alderley Park, Glasgow
Working style: Hybrid 50% home/office based

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Lead Front End Developer to lead the development of Royal London’s Design System. The role is responsible for evolving reusable, accessible front-end foundations built in vanilla HTML and CSS, and helping product teams understand how these foundations integrate with JavaScript and frameworks such as Angular.

You will work with UX, engineering and product teams to improve adoption, quality and consistency across our digital experiences, translating technical detail clearly for stakeholders, with support from a Technical Specialist on deeper technical decisions.

This role supports Royal London’s mutual purpose by helping product teams deliver consistent, accessible and customer-focused digital experiences.

About the role

• Lead the development and delivery of Royal London’s Design System, ensuring reusable front-end foundations are accessible, performant, standards-compliant and easy for product teams to adopt across web journeys.
• Collaborate with designers and engineers to translate designs into fully functional and responsive components, patterns and templates.
• Develop and maintain reusable, efficient front-end code libraries and components, with a strong focus on vanilla HTML and CSS that can be integrated into JavaScript and framework-based product environments.
• Experience building and maintaining design token architecture, including Figma-to-code token pipelines, and familiarity with CI/CD for component libraries (automated testing, versioning, release workflows).
• Optimise front-end performance and user experience across multiple devices, browsers and product environments.
• Conduct code reviews to ensure adherence to best practices, quality standards, and project requirements.
• Plan and facilitate workshops for other agile squads (product teams) who plan to, or who are adopting the Design System.
• Own research into technologies, implementation patterns and third-party components that could affect the Design System, including how reusable components are adopted across web environments

About you

• Strong technical knowledge of front-end programming languages, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with an excellent understanding of the full software development lifecycle.
• Strong understanding of JavaScript and UI frameworks, with practical awareness of how reusable Design System components are integrated into framework-based applications such as Angular.
• In-depth knowledge of accessibility guidelines, including WCAG and ARIA, and experience using accessibility testing tools to improve the quality of digital experiences.
• Awareness of mobile app development approaches and how design system principles can support native or hybrid app experiences would be beneficial.
• Ability to lead and work as part of a team and within an Agile framework.
• Good communication and influencing skills with ability to consult with multiple stakeholders.
• Familiar with automated testing techniques and frameworks.

If you feel you’d be a great fit for Royal London but don’t meet every requirement, we’d still love to hear from you. Research shows some candidates are less likely to apply unless they meet 100% of the criteria - if you meet most requirements and are keen to learn, we encourage you to apply!

About Royal London

We’re the UK’s largest mutual life, pensions and investment company, offering protection, long-term savings and asset management products and services.

Our People Promise to our colleagues is that we will all work somewhere inclusive, responsible, enjoyable and fulfilling. This is underpinned by our Spirit of Royal London values; Empowered, Trustworthy, Collaborate, Achieve.

We've always been proud to reward employees by offering great workplace benefits such as 28 days annual leave in addition to bank holidays, an up to 14% employer matching pension scheme and private medical insurance.

Inclusion, diversity and belonging

We’re an inclusive employer. We celebrate and value different backgrounds and cultures across Royal London. Our diverse people and perspectives give us a range of skills which are recognised and respected – whatever their background.