Front End Engineer

About the Role

We’re seeking a skilled and diligent full-time Frontend Engineer to join our growing team. You will work as part of our team to:

• Own the technical direction and architecture of Tailscale’s next-generation web console
• Build frontend infrastructure and platform capabilities that enable multiple Tailscale products to ship within a unified console experience
• Bring a special focus to identity-adjacent frontend systems, including authentication, session management, secure cross-origin integrations, and product surfaces that span multiple services

Because we’re a fully remote company building a highly technical product, we’re looking for someone who can move fluidly between product engineering and platform engineering. This role sits at an important intersection of user experience, browser security, developer tooling, and internal platform design. The ability to think strategically, make pragmatic architecture decisions, collaborate across engineering, design, growth, and infrastructure, and help other teams build with confidence is essential.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and drive the frontend architecture for Tailscale’s next-generation console, including application structure, routing, state boundaries, shared abstractions, and long-term maintainability
• Design and maintain cross-origin authentication and session infrastructure between the console and other services, including auth flows, CORS policies, CSRF protections, cookie/session strategies, and support for multiple deployment environments
• Build and operate a frontend serving platform capable of hosting multiple Tailscale products under a unified development workflow
• Establish shared infrastructure, conventions, and design patterns that consolidate distinct product experiences into a cohesive console platform
• Create frontend architecture patterns, tooling, and abstractions that enable non-frontend engineers to build accessible, production-quality UI safely and efficiently
• Partner closely with Product Design to turn complex infrastructure and identity concepts into intuitive user experiences
• Collaborate with Growth, Design, Product, and other engineering teams on experimentation and iteration, including A/B testing, analytics instrumentation, and feature rollout strategies
• Define and improve frontend testing strategy across the console, including integration testing, end-to-end coverage, local developer ergonomics, and abstractions that reduce testing complexity for product teams
• Work with infrastructure and engineering tooling teams to improve local development workflows, build pipelines, preview deployments, release ergonomics, and operational reliability
• Raise the quality bar for frontend engineering across Tailscale through technical leadership, reviews, mentoring, and clear platform guardrails

• Required participation in our on-call rotation every x weeks, to triage and mitigate incidents

What We Are Looking For

• Deep experience building and operating production React applications at scale
• Strong understanding of web platform fundamentals, including HTTP semantics, browser security boundaries, authentication flows, cookies, storage, CORS, and CSRF
• Experience building internal platforms, frameworks, or shared libraries that enable other teams to ship products with strong guardrails
• Experience driving a unified console or platform vision across disparate frontend codebases
• Strong judgment around frontend architecture: knowing when to standardize, when to abstract, and how to keep systems understandable as they grow
• Experience designing scalable frontend testing strategies that improve confidence while hiding incidental complexity from product engineers
• Comfort collaborating across disciplines and functions, especially with design, growth, infrastructure, and developer tooling
• Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain tradeoffs and influence technical direction across teams
• A high degree of ownership and autonomy, with the ability to identify important problems and drive them through ambiguity

Nice to Have

• Experience designing frontend codebases and tooling optimized for AI-assisted development, including conventions and abstractions that help LLM-based agents produce correct, consistent UI with fewer iterations
• Experience with design systems, component libraries, and connecting design tooling to production UI workflows
• Experience with feature flagging, analytics, experimentation systems, and progressive delivery patterns
• Experience working on identity, admin, B2B SaaS, or security-sensitive product surfaces

As a company, we strive to maintain fair and equitable compensation practices within our team across all roles and all levels. Tailscale's compensation package includes base salary, equity, and comprehensive benefits. The salary range displayed on each job posting represents the target range for a new hire's base salary. Individual offers may vary based on experience and skill set.