Front-End Engineer

We’re looking for a Front-End Engineer (minimum 3 years industry experience) to join a small, fast-moving team as it evolves to move Yoto's sites from Shopify to Jamstack and onto new regions.

Nice to meet you

Yoto puts kids in control of an inspiring world of audio.

Our screen-free audio players let kids listen, learn and play at their own pace. All while making sure they’re safe to explore what inspires them.

The award-winning Yoto Player launched in 2020, just before the big you-know-what. Now you can find it on play mats, kitchen counters and bedside tables all around the world. Yoto Mini, our portable player, launched in late 2021 and is already accompanying kids on some incredible adventures.

The Yoto Card Store has more than 700 titles from some of the world's best creators, publishers and labels. We also create Yoto Originals like this one. Oh, and this one too!

What we will need you to do:

You’ll collaborate with designers, marketing and content teams to build world class web apps for the Yoto platform: our flagship online stores across different countries as well as purpose-built web apps and dashboards for Yoto users, supply chain and for internal use.

We have an office in King’s Cross, London. You’ll be expected to visit from time to time but the role will be largely remote. Whilst this is not a remote-only position, we offer flexible working hours or remote working where possible and appropriate. Many of the team are parents and we truly understand that life and work need to work together.

You will have the opportunity to:

• Develop Yoto’s Pattern Library and Components, build sites integrated with our headless CMS and static-first deployments.
• Collaborate daily with the FE team and with other areas of the business.
• Help us uphold accessibility. Not just to tick off automated targets but real human use cases.
• Keep energy consumption in mind (carbon footprint) when making technical choices in front end and back end code.
• Appreciate and encourage semantic markup (without scattering aria attributes everywhere!)
• Delve into page speed, questioning and honing every third party integration to uphold performance and web vitals.
• Be involved with design prototypes and remain mindful of UX in all aspects of development.
• As necessary, research & POC new solutions to share/learn with the team.
• Be a force for good in testing, code standards and best practices. Experienced in tooling, unit tests, e2e, code-snapshots, visual-snapshots, enforcing good coding practices etc.
• Chip into other topics from time to time: Shopify; Bug fixing; Building a POC, Assessing third party tools; occasional full stack; Devops; baffling webpack configs etc.
• Take part in researching, estimating and prioritising features for roadmap

What you’ll need to bring:

• Ways of working with Agile and in teams.
  
• At least 3 years industry experience using front end frameworks.
• Strong knowledge and enthusiasm for semantic markup, with an appreciation of UX & a11y.
• Good CSS skills. Mobile-first, responsive-design and familiarity with modern techniques and cross-browser compatibility.
• Good JS skills. Ideally experience with a popular Frontend Framework (React or Vue etc) as well as a strong understanding of vanilla JS. Typescript is a bonus.
• Strong communication skills; ask questions, share knowledge, help and be helped.
• Good understanding of responsive design principles, speed optimisation techniques, web standards, security, accessibility.
  

You'd impress us with any of the following:

We’re a small team so you’ll get a chance to play with plenty of different things all the time – bonus points for any experience or desire to dig into any of the following:

• Running Sprints as a dev lead. Preparing and managing tasks.
• Experience of systems integration & e-commerce integration with third parties (Marketing, Logistics, APIs, Subscription)
• Shopify API experience, Shopify apps or experience with building and managing high-volume e-commerce sites.
• Jamstack, cloud based infrastructures (AWS etc), Serverless development. OAuth/OpenID protocols.
• Headless integrations of CMS and other tools. Storybook, GraphQL.

What you can expect during the interview process:

• A short screening interview, a tech interview and a final chat with our CTO.
• For the technical interview, instead of a weekend-consuming coding assignment we would like you to "show & tell" a project you have worked on, including a UI demo and code walkthrough in both browser and your IDE: The good and the bad; the constraints that led to the solution; what you’d change, given time and the opportunity. Consider aspects such as performance, accessibility, naming, re-use and whether another developer could understand it!

What we offer in return:

• Generous EMI share options - we’re all invested in Yoto’s success
• Hybrid working with a choice-based approach. (The web team tend to assemble in the office at least one day a week)
• A Work from Anywhere policy giving you the opportunity to work from a different location for a temporary period
• 25 days’ holiday per year, plus bank holidays
• Yoto player and starter pack of cards
• 2x volunteer days a year
• Central London office in Kings Cross
• A collaborative tech-focused creative environment
• Company socials and celebrations, including our annual company gathering ‘Yoto Fest’

Salary: Up to £65,000 depending on experience

NB: This is a full-time role and you must be eligible to work in the UK as we are unable to offer visa sponsorship. No recruiters please!

About Yoto

We're a Series A tech company with a well-funded and fast-growing international team.

Our offices are in London and New York, and during 2022 we are expanding further into Europe. We have in-house expertise in hardware and software, technology development, product, marketing, commercial and retail.

We’re excited to build and develop a tight-knit and energetic team to help make Yoto the next great family brand!

Yoto spans the kids' audio, tech, entertainment and edtech industries, and our products have won awards in innovation, play and education categories. Time Magazine even named Yoto Player one of the Best Inventions of 2020.

Our Card Store includes 700 titles from the world’s best rights-holders including Disney, Penguin Random House, Mattel, Harper Collins and Sony Music. We also produce our own Yoto Originals, often with award-winning collaborators.

Flexible working and autonomy are key to life at Yoto. We support working parents because we know that life and work need to work together. And just as we share audio content from a diverse community of creators, we also strive to build an inclusive team. Our passionate D&I group raises new voices, beliefs, and perspectives to help everyone at Yoto feel heard. Check out our website for more info on our approach to D&I.