Front-End Lead Engineer

This role is offered on an Italian employment contract. Candidates must be based in Italy as we are unable to support remote working from outside the country due to local employment and tax legislation.

This role sits within Deltatre’s OTT delivery organisation, where front-end engineering teams build the applications millions of fans use to watch live and on-demand sport. The team combines hands-on engineering with the delivery discipline needed to ship reliably across major international projects.

As Front-End Lead Engineer, you will drive the development of high-quality, scalable front-end solutions while staying hands-on with the code. You’ll shape front-end architecture, set engineering standards across delivery teams, guide and mentor engineers, and act as the main technical point of contact between your team and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

Technical excellence

• Oversee all front-end engineering aspects of assigned projects, ensuring robust, scalable, secure, high-performing, and accessible solutions
• Plan, schedule, coordinate, and monitor front-end development activities, driving task prioritisation and providing technical assessments and estimations
• Review and validate the technical approach and code quality for all team deliverables, ensuring compliance with best practices, coding standards, and performance benchmarks
• Identify and resolve technical issues and blockers, raising concerns with proposed architecture and escalating when necessary
• Drive the adoption of automation, efficient tooling, and modern front-end technologies and methodologies
• Establish efficient front-end workflows and processes, and maintain supporting documentation, including architectural principles

Leadership and team growth

• Mentor, coach, and support the professional growth and onboarding of engineering team members
• Track and support performance feedback within the team
• Contribute to the recruitment and integration of new front-end team members

Strategy and process management

• Contribute technical insights to project planning, aligning team efforts with project goals and identifying opportunities for technical improvement
• Collaborate with Technical Directors to find innovative front-end solutions and share knowledge
• Support the team in grooming planned activities and detailing stories with the BA/PO, including defining acceptance criteria
• Manage and communicate technical risks, escalating to the Lead PM or Technical Director when necessary

Communication and stakeholder engagement

• Act as the main technical point of contact for the team, engaging with customers and stakeholders on technical topics and bridging technical and business perspectives
• Translate business requirements into technical needs in collaboration with the Product Owner
• Present technical solutions and progress clearly to technical and non-technical audiences, escalating larger initiatives to the Technical Director when appropriate
• Provide on-call support when required

Requirements

You have done this before - here’s what we’re looking for.

Required

• Proficiency in TypeScript and modern JavaScript (ES6+) fundamentals
• Thorough understanding of React.js and its core principles
• Experience with Node.js, particularly with the Next.js framework and server-side/client-side rendering concepts
• Strong knowledge of Tailwind CSS for building responsive, reusable user interfaces
• Expertise in front-end testing using Jest
• Expertise designing scalable front-end architecture for complex applications, with a strong grasp of component-based and other modern design patterns
• Strong understanding of performance optimisation, benchmarking, security, and accessibility best practices
• High proficiency with Git
• Experience guiding and mentoring engineers, including supporting their professional growth
• Track record of making and owning architectural decisions, and communicating technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Valued

• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approaches for deployment and release management
• Basic knowledge of self-hosting Node.js applications in containerised environments
• Understanding of Docker and Kubernetes for deployment and orchestration of front-end applications
• Experience with front-end build tools and module bundlers

Who Thrives Here

This role sits between hands-on engineering and technical leadership - you’re reviewing a pull r