Staff Frontend Engineer

What Artisan Is We're building AI employees. Not chatbots. Not copilots. Autonomous digital workers that do real jobs. Our first, Ava, is an AI BDR used by hundreds of companies. She researches leads, writes and sends emails in a customer's voice, runs multi-step outbound sequences, manages her own deliverability infrastructure, self-optimizes over time, and handles objections and meeting booking. She's not a tool someone uses. She's a teammate. We're a YC W24 company, have raised $35M+ from investors including Y Combinator, and are at $8M+ ARR. Right now we're building Ava 2.0, a step change in what an AI employee can do. The engineering problems are hard and the surface area is enormous. The Role Artisan isn't a single product. It's an entire working platform that replaces the sales stack. That means CRM, inbox, dialer, lead database, campaign engine, website visitor tracking, and AI agent management, all in one product. The frontend is where all of this comes together for the user. The design bar is high. We build dense, information-rich interfaces with calm clarity. Think Ramp, not Salesforce. Every view needs to surface the right data without visual noise, handle complex workflows without feeling complex, and make working alongside an AI employee feel natural. You'll own the frontend architecture and set the standard for how Artisan is built on the client side. This is a staff-level role. You won't just ship features. You'll define how the team builds UI. What that looks like concretely: Multi-product frontend architecture. Artisan ships dozens of products as a unified platform. You'll build and maintain the component systems, routing, state management, and shared infrastructure that make this feel like one product, not seven. Real-time, data-dense interfaces. Users manage thousands of leads, monitor live AI activity, review email sequences, and track campaign performance. The UI needs to render large datasets performantly, update in real time, and remain usable at scale. Tables, filters, search, dashboards, activity feeds. This is the core of the product experience. AI-native interaction patterns. Users work alongside Ava as a teammate. That means designing and building interfaces for AI transparency (what is Ava doing and why), human-in-the-loop controls, confidence indicators, and workflows where human and AI actions interleave. There's no established playbook for this. You'll help create one. Design system and component library. Build and maintain a design system that enforces consistency, accelerates development, and scales across the product suite. Tight collaboration with design to translate Figma specs into production components. Performance and quality. Fast initial loads, smooth interactions, minimal layout shift, accessible markup. The product is used all day by salespeople who live in it. Performance is a feature. Developer experience. Build frontend tooling, patterns, and conventions that make other engineers faster. Code review, mentorship, documentation. You raise the bar for the whole frontend codebase. Our stack: TypeScript, React, deployed on AWS. We ship constantly. Who You Are 6+ years of frontend engineering experience, with a track record of building complex, data-rich web applications Deep expertise in TypeScript and React. You don't just use them. You understand the internals, the tradeoffs, and the patterns that scale. Strong experience with state management, performance optimization, and rendering large datasets in the browser You've built or maintained design systems and component libraries used across multiple product surfaces An eye for design quality. You care about spacing, alignment, typography, and interaction polish. You can take a Figma file and ship something that matches it exactly, or push back on design when something won't work in practice. Experience with real-time data (WebSockets, polling, optimistic updates) and complex form/table UIs Opinions on frontend architecture, testing strategy, and code organization, grounded in experience shipping production software Comfortable working directly with designers and product managers to shape features, not just implement specs Bonus: experience building interfaces for AI products, conversational UIs, or agent-based systems Bonus: experience with accessibility standards and internationalization Bonus: startup experience where you defined the frontend architecture from the ground up Why This Role The product surface is massive. You're not building a single-feature app. Artisan is an entire platform with a CRM, inbox, dialer, campaign engine, lead database, and AI agent management. The frontend complexity rivals products that have dedicated teams for each surface. Here, you'll work across all of them. The design problems are genuinely new. How do you build a UI where an AI teammate's actions are transparent, controllable, and trustworthy? How do you make working alongside an autonomous agent feel as natural as working with a human? Nobody has solved this well yet. You'll set the standard. This is a staff-level hire. You'll define the frontend architecture, design system, patterns, and practices that the engineering team builds on. Your decisions shape the product experience for every user. Competitive salary + meaningful equity. We compensate for impact. Details Location: San Francisco, New York, or Remote (US) Team: Engineering Reports to: Sam Stallings, CPTO US visa sponsorship available Interview Process Introductory chat with our recruiter 45-minute technical interview with an engineer Second 45-minute technical interview with an engineer 30-minute interview with Sam, our CPTO 30-minute culture and values interview with Jaspar, our CEO Our Culture and Values Founder mindset. Everyone acts like an owner: take initiative, think big, challenge ideas, and push for 10x outcomes. Obsessed with impact. We apply the 80/20 rule, kill sunk costs quickly, and focus on what actually moves the needle. Customer-first, always. Every decision starts with the customer experience. High standards, every detail. Quality matters in everything we ship, from product and code to copy and design. Clear, direct communication. We value candor, fast responses, and real feedback. Winning team energy. Positive vibes, low ego, zero drama. We genuinely enjoy building together.