Senior Frontend Engineer (UK or DE)

Hours: Full-time

Salary: £70K - £80K / €80K - €90K

Location: Remote (within the UK or Germany only)

Contract: Permanent or Freelance

About TravelLocal

We connect travellers with handpicked, locally-owned tour operators in nearly 100 destinations around the world. Our mission is simple but meaningful: make travel fairer, more sustainable, and more rewarding — for travellers, for local communities, and for the planet.

Since we started, over 50,000 customers from 90 countries have booked with us. We're a small, remote-friendly team based across the UK and Germany — a mix of engineers, product thinkers, and travel enthusiasts who genuinely care about what we're building.

A candid note about where we are

We want to be straight with you. We're a small company at a genuinely pivotal moment. We're on a clear path to profitability, and we're building with care and intention — but it's not a cushy corporate ride. We need people who are energised by that, not put off by it.

If you want to be one of three people making a real difference to how a product performs and see how your work is directly visible in conversion rates and customer outcomes, this may be the opportunity for you. If you want everything mapped out and a big team to hide in, this probably isn't the right fit, and that's okay.

What we can offer is real ownership, a team that trusts you, and work that matters.

Tasks

The role

We work in small, cross-functional product teams — a product manager, a product designer, and two or three engineers. That's it. We strive to move quickly, communicate directly and trust each other to make good decisions without unnecessary overhead. Everyone on the team has a product mindset: we start with the problem, not the solution, and engineers are expected to engage with the 'why' just as much as the 'how'. You're not here to take tickets — you're here to help figure out the right thing to build, and then build it well.

As our Senior Frontend Engineer, you'll own the frontend with a focus on one side of our two-sided marketplace. On one side are travellers looking for tailor-made experiences they couldn't find or trust anywhere else. On the other are our on-the-ground travel experts — local operators who craft and deliver those trips with genuine local knowledge. Your work touches both sides: helping travellers feel confident booking, and helping our experts work efficiently and at scale.

Right now, our frontend works, but it's showing its age in a few places. You'll be leading the journey to something more modern, more consistent, and more performant — and you'll have real influence over how that happens.

Day to day, you'll be:

• Building responsive, accessible interfaces that people actually enjoy using and trust — translating Figma designs into polished, well-structured frontend code
• Working closely with our Product Designer and Product Manager as a genuinely collaborative trio
• Establishing and maintaining a component library as a single source of truth for the UI, with visual and functional regression checks to keep things stable as we move fast
• Contributing to our CI/CD pipeline — helping make deployments reliable, repeatable, and easy to roll back
• Reviewing code and holding a high bar for quality
• Using AI tooling as a genuine productivity multiplier — we want someone who's comfortable with this, not just curious about it

Requirements

What we're looking for

We care more about how you think and what you care about than whether your CV hits every bullet point. That said, here's what would make you a strong fit:

Essentials

• Demonstrable senior-level experience in frontend engineering — you've shipped real products, made architectural decisions, and know what good looks like
• Strong hands-on skills with React and TypeScript — you write clean, maintainable code
• Solid experience with Next.js or similar React framework — comfortable with SSR, routing, and app architecture
• Experience working with GraphQL and typed API clients
• Strong skills in semantic HTML and modern CSS — mobile-first by default, with experience with CSS frameworks or preprocessors
• Confident working directly from Figma — you know how to use Dev Mode and translate designs faithfully without needing constant back-and-forth with a designer
• A user-centred mindset — you think about the person using the interface, not just the code that produces it
• Comfortable working autonomously in a small, remote team — you don't need much hand-holding, but you know when to ask for help

Lovely to have

• Experience with Bulma or similar CSS frameworks
• Familiarity with SASS/SCSS
• Experience with Storybook or similar component library tooling
• A background working in two-sided marketplaces or travel
• Some exposure to PHP or server-side templating — handy for reading backend code and debugging integration issues, but not something you'd be doing day to day

Benefits

What we offer

• Full remote flexibility — work from anywhere in the UK or Germany, with the option to use offices in Bristol or Berlin with core hours of 10:00 - 15:00 GMT
• After your probation, the ability to work temporarily from elsewhere (within a 6 hour time difference to the Bristol office)
• 26 days holiday per year, increasing with tenure, plus public holidays and your birthday off
• After your probation, a generous annual allowance for professional development, wellbeing, and travel with our partners
• Flexible working hours — we care about output, not when you're online
• A collaborative, low-ego team that gives you real ownership and trusts you to use it

How we hire

We keep our process as straightforward as we can. You'll meet real people from the team at every stage, and we'll always tell you where you stand. You may find this process to be quite in-depth, but it ensures that we hire with intention.

• Application and CV review
• Screening & culture conversation
• Cross-functional collaboration interview
• Take-home technical exercise (paid for freelance candidates)
• Technical deep dive
• Offer

A short note about why this role appeals to you and how your experience is relevant goes a long way — we read every one. You don't need to hit every requirement; if the work sounds interesting and the environment sounds right for you, we'd love to hear from you.

We aim to respond to all applications within two weeks.

TravelLocal is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and do not discriminate on any basis.

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