Lead Frontend Engineer

About Us

We’re a startup with big ambitions: to make estate planning modern, visual, and intelligent. Vanilla is the first AI-powered estate advisory platform, built by advisors, planners, and attorneys to transform how wealth is transferred across generations. Our technology unifies scenario modeling, client visualization, and document creation into one seamless, digital experience.

Our team brings together diverse subject matter expertise across estate planning, wealth management, and scaling SaaS startups. We’re distributed across the U.S., with a mix of fully remote and hybrid roles, and we embrace flexibility while staying closely connected. At Vanilla, you’ll join curious builders and problem-solvers who thrive on speed, autonomy, and impact. Here, you won’t just join a company, you’ll help create it. If you’re excited to tackle hard problems, move quickly, and see your work shape both an industry and a growing startup, we’d love to meet you.

Working Location

This role is a remote position, you must be based out of one of the following states: Arizona,California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah or Washington

The Role

We're hiring a Lead Frontend Engineer for our Core App team - the team that owns the primary advisor-facing experience at the heart of the Vanilla platform.

This is a high-ownership, cross-team leadership role. You'll set standards others calibrate against, not just follow them. You'll manage cross-functional dependencies without being asked. When a project is at risk, you'll show up with a revised plan, not a status update.

If you're someone who sees a problem three tickets upstream and can't help but fix the root cause - keep reading.

What You'll Own

• Frontend architecture and production quality for Core App - including observability, instrumentation, and operational readiness from day one, not as a follow-up task

• Platform-wide frontend standards - shared components, service API patterns, design system usage - driving consistency across teams without mandating it

• Technical design for significant cross-team projects, from initial design through delivery, pulling in the right stakeholders at the right moments and making the call when it doesn't need to escalate

• Frontend excellence across the org - not by policing standards, but by demonstrating their value and building the case for change through concrete examples and working code

• Mentorship and growth of engineers around you - creating an environment where it's safe to not know something, sponsoring engineers for stretch opportunities, giving direct and honest feedback

What We're Looking For

Technical depth

• 5+ years of frontend engineering experience, with deep expertise in React and TypeScript

• Uses AI tools fluently as part of everyday development — code generation, debugging, documentation — and exercises judgment about when to trust, verify, or override the output.

• Strong command of atomic design and scalable component architecture

• Proven experience contributing to or leading a shared design system

• Experience with GraphQL and/or RESTful APIs

• Consistent track record of high-quality, production-ready code - observability, testing, and operational readiness treated as first-class concerns, not afterthoughts

Lead-level judgment

• You solve cross-cutting problems - not just the issue in front of you, but the upstream reason it keeps happening

• You communicate blockers and risks early, with proposed solutions, not just flags

• You build trusted relationships across engineering, product, and design - you're the person other teams want to work with

• You translate technical complexity into business language without losing the substance

• You push back on scope and priorities when something doesn't add up - not to obstruct, but because you care about building the right thing

Product and quality mindset

• Experience implementing analytics, tracking, and frontend observability

• Familiarity with tools like Datadog or similar platforms

• Strong collaboration history with product designers using Figma

• Comfortable resolving design inconsistencies proactively

Nice to have

• Experience integrating AI/ML-driven features into production UIs

• Experience with Rails or Python

• Experience in fast-growing startup environments

Why This Role Matters

Core App is the primary surface advisors use every day. The frontend decisions made here directly shape how wealth management professionals experience estate planning - and how Vanilla's platform evolves. We need someone who can hold a high technical bar, align teams around it, and confidently ship at scale - without someone else clearing the path.

The salary range for this role is $160,000 to $190,000 Our compensation packages also include a performance based bonus and equity. Compensation is based on a number of factors and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for sponsorship now or in the future. Vanilla is unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.

Benefits:

• Flexible paid time off policy and 10 company-wide paid holidays 

• Parental leave, 6 weeks for all full-time employees and up to 14 weeks for birthing parents

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits coverage for employees and their families 

• 401K eligibility after one month of employment

• Free estate planning documents

• Budget for learning & development and home office setup 

• Paid parking or transit for hybrid and in office employees 

Vanilla Technologies Inc. (dba "Vanilla") provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

Vanilla participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S.