Senior Frontend Software Engineer

The way we build software is changing. We think that's a good thing.

Remember when being a great software engineer meant writing clean code, solving complex problems and knowing your programming language inside out?

Well, it still does. Sorry, no shortcuts there.

But AI is changing how software gets built, and we're looking for someone who's excited about what that means.

At First Focus, we're looking for an experienced Senior Frontend Software Engineer who combines strong TypeScript and frontend development skills with a genuine passion for agentic AI.

Someone who can design the right solution, guide AI agents effectively and make sure the finished product is secure, maintainable and actually works.

We're not looking for someone who blindly accepts whatever an AI coding assistant produces. We need someone who knows when it's brilliant, when it's wrong and when it's confidently invented something that doesn't exist.

If you've already started rethinking how you build software because of AI, we should probably talk.

Who is First Focus?

We're one of Australia's leading managed service providers, helping more than 1,000 organisations get more from their technology.

Technology is what we do, but relationships are what we're known for.

Alongside our managed IT services, our growing software engineering capability builds business applications, customer portals, internal platforms, integrations and innovative solutions using modern technologies and AI.

We value curiosity, practical thinking and people who care about doing great work. We're also not particularly interested in unnecessary bureaucracy. Good ideas matter more than job titles.

Our values include Live Curiously, Be the Solution and Never Stop Growing, which fit rather nicely with the way we're approaching AI-powered software development.

Learn more about First Focus and our values at https://www.firstfocus.com.au/about-us/.

About the contract

This is a 12-month independent contractor engagement, focused on building modern frontend applications and helping our software engineering team adopt practical agentic AI development practices.

You'll work primarily with TypeScript and modern frontend technologies, building responsive, maintainable applications without being tied to one particular framework. Full-stack experience is a welcome bonus.

But this isn't just another frontend development role.

You'll use AI coding agents as part of your everyday workflow to help explore codebases, implement features, generate tests, review changes and improve how software is delivered.

You'll also help establish practical approaches that make AI-assisted development reliable, secure and repeatable.

A few things worth knowing:

• 12-month independent contractor engagement with a clear software delivery focus.
• Opportunity to work on modern frontend applications and agentic AI development initiatives.
• Hands-on involvement with TypeScript, reusable UI components and shared design systems.
• Close collaboration with UX/UI designers and software engineering teams.
• Autonomy to influence engineering practices and how AI agents are used in development.
• A collaborative team that values curiosity, practical thinking and quality outcomes.

Important: This opportunity is offered on an independent contractor basis for 12 months. It is not a fixed-term employee role, and employee benefits and entitlements do not form part of the contractor engagement.

Requirements

What you'll be doing

• Design and build modern, responsive frontend applications using TypeScript.
• Create reusable UI components and shared design systems alongside our UX/UI designer.
• Turn design specifications into accessible, production-ready user experiences.
• Own features from technical design through development, testing and deployment.
• Use AI coding agents for development, debugging, testing, refactoring and documentation.
• Break complex work into clear tasks that AI agents can execute and validate.
• Develop practical AI workflows, including agent instructions, context management and code reviews.
• Review AI-generated code for quality, security, performance and maintainability.
• Build automated tests and validation processes to support reliable software delivery.
• Collaborate on APIs, integrations and backend services when needed.
• Share knowledge and help other engineers adopt effective agentic AI practices.

What you'll bring

We're looking for someone with strong software engineering experience who has already moved beyond simply asking an AI assistant to write a function.

• Strong experience building production frontend applications using TypeScript and JavaScript.
• Excellent understanding of component-based architecture, reusable UI libraries and design systems.
• Experience with application state, APIs, asynchronous programming, performance and accessibility.
• Sound engineering judgement around architecture, security and maintainability.
• Practical experience using AI coding agents in real development projects.
• Ability to guide AI agents with clear tasks, context, constraints and validation.
• Strong testing, debugging, code review, version control and CI/CD skills.
• Ability to work independently, communicate clearly and deliver quality outcomes.

We're particularly interested in how you use agentic AI.

Have you used AI agents to deliver meaningful features rather than just generate a few lines of code?

Can you structure tasks, provide the right context and check that the results are actually production-ready?

Do you know when to trust an AI agent and when to politely tell it that its solution is complete nonsense?

That's the experience we're looking for.

Bonus points if you've worked with

• Full-stack development, backend services and APIs.
• Agent orchestration, multi-agent workflows or parallel development tasks.
• Specification-driven development and structured AI workflows.
• Automated testing and validation pipelines for AI-generated code.
• AI-assisted code reviews, refactoring and technical debt reduction.
• Cloud-native applications and managed backend services.
• AI agent security, including tool permissions, secret management and secure code reviews.

We're not particularly concerned about which AI coding tool you prefer. They change faster than most of us can update our LinkedIn skills.

What matters is knowing how to use them effectively, safely and consistently.

The kind of person who'll thrive here

You're an experienced engineer who understands that AI doesn't replace good engineering judgement. It makes it even more important.

You're happy to let AI agents handle the heavy lifting, but you know when to step in, question their approach or start again.

You care about clean architecture, maintainable code, security and creating great experiences for the people using your applications.

You enjoy working with designers and understand that a great frontend is more than a collection of components that happen to render correctly.

You don't measure productivity by lines of code, and you know that sometimes writing a better specification is far more valuable than writing another hundred lines yourself.

Most importantly, you're curious about emerging technology but practical enough to know that a working demo and production-ready software are two very different things.

Benefits

Why First Focus?

This is an opportunity to work on real software applications while helping shape how our engineering team embraces AI-native development.

You'll have room to experiment with emerging tools and approaches, with the expectation that experimentation leads to practical, reliable outcomes.

You'll collaborate closely with our UX/UI design capability to turn shared design patterns into reusable, high-quality frontend components.

Rather than simply following an established development process, you'll have the chance to influence how that process evolves.

We value engineers who think critically, take ownership and aren't afraid to challenge the way things have always been done.

And if you've ever watched an AI agent confidently generate a solution to a problem nobody asked it to solve, you'll fit right in.

Interested?

We'd love to hear about the applications you've built, but we're equally interested in how you build them.

Show us a project where you've used AI agents to deliver something meaningful.

Tell us how you structured the work, what you delegated to AI, what you handled yourself and how you made sure the result was production-ready.

Bonus points for sharing a time an AI agent got something spectacularly wrong and how you caught it before it became everyone else's problem.

We're not looking for someone who knows every AI tool on the market.

We're looking for an experienced engineer who understands how agentic AI is changing software development and wants to help shape what comes next.

If that sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you.

Neurodiversity: First Focus welcomes applications from Neurodiverse candidates. We recommend & appreciate disclosure along with the application so that a copy of our Neurodiversity Statement can be provided outlining the flexible options we can offer to best showcase your skills.

AI in Recruitment: We use AI-assisted recruitment tools to support our recruitment process. These tools do not make hiring decisions. Candidate information is handled in accordance with applicable New Zealand privacy legislation.