Senior Front End Engineer
About Kavak
As Mexico's first unicorn company, with a presence in several countries and an AI-first business model, Kavak is redefining the used car market and the experience of millions of users across LatAm. We have been one of the highest-valued companies in the region and recently closed a USD 300M funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, one of their largest investments in Latin America. With this growth, we are excited to bring on more people to help us build the next chapter of our product and take our efforts in building with artificial intelligence to the next level.
We are building with AI at the core of our operations from conversational commerce, to generative marketing, to systems that extract insights from millions of interactions. We are a team that imagines the impossible, builds it, and lives disruption, proactivity, and ambition in a hyper-growth environment.
Kavak Talent
1. Deliver Impact: You prioritize what generates measurable results and raise the bar using technology and data. You have a consistent track record of delivering relevant and measurable results.
2. Engage Fast: You act on problems and opportunities. You decide on time, advance in short cycles, and adjust when necessary without compromising standards.
3. Engage with Purpose: You act with extreme ownership, taking total responsibility for results that impact your work and aligning decisions with Kavak's vision and purpose.
4. Play to Win Together: You prioritize collective results over individual success.
About the role
You are a Senior Full Stack Engineer who will join Tech Brasil, a small but strategic team responsible for key technology initiatives in Brazil. Your initial focus will be Kuna (our automotive financing product with auto equity and car loans), but you will soon expand to other critical projects.
Work Distribution: 70% frontend (React/Angular), 30% backend (Java/Spring Boot). You'll own the full integration: design APIs, consume them, handle data flows, and take responsibility across both layers. Kuna is Kavak's fintech vertical, where we build financial products for origination, credit, payments, collections, scoring, back office, and core integrations.
Contract type: full-time, CLT.
Responsibilities
- Develop and iterate on Kuna: auto equity and car loans for Brazil
Write clean, maintainable, well-documented code (React/Angular)
Collaborate in weekly/biweekly planning sessions to break down deliverables with the team
Backend-frontend integration: API consumption, data flows, services
Contribute to both layers: frontend with UX/UI and backend when needed (we are generalists)
Requirements
- 6+ years of professional experience in React or Angular
- Strong UX/UI sensibility: you understand the interface is not cosmetic. It's functionality and experience
- Frontend-backend integration: consuming REST APIs, state management, data flows, service architecture
- Java + Spring Boot at an intermediate-to-advanced level
- Ability to design and review REST APIs (correct HTTP methods, request/response structures, pagination)
- Data modeling: understanding schemas, relationships, and how frontend queries map to backend
- Backend logic: validation rules, business logic placement (frontend vs backend), error handling
- Git and team workflow practices
- Clear understanding of responsibility boundaries: what validates in frontend (UX) vs backend (security, business rules)
- Ability to think architecturally: trace a feature from UI interaction → API call → database query → response
- Active use of AI tools in your daily workflow (Claude Code, Copilot, or others)
- Native Portuguese and fluent Spanish or English
- Experience in fintech, lending, payments, credit scoring, or collections
- Experience designing systems at scale (100k+ records, pagination, caching)
- WebSocket, polling, or real-time data patterns
- Familiarity with Spring Boot annotations and dependency injection
Frontend (Must-have)
Backend (Must-have)
Full Stack (Must-have)
Tools & Mindset
Plus (Nice-to-have)
Core Competencies
Ownership: You take full responsibility for your work. You seek solutions without waiting for permission.
Speed and Resilience: Kavak moves fast. We need people who thrive at a quick pace and don’t freeze. You can deliver even if everything isn’t perfect when the market needs it now.
Autonomy: We work in a small team. You must self-direct, self-evaluate, identify what’s missing, and take action.
Intellectual Curiosity: You ask questions, research, and don’t accept obvious solutions. You care about understanding why things are done a certain way.
Clear Communication: You explain technical decisions to non-technical people. You receive feedback without defensiveness. You document what matters.
Ability to work in ambiguity.
Adaptability.
Benefits in Brazil
- Medical and dental coverage for you and your legal dependents
- WellHub (Gympass) access for physical activities and mental health support
- Meal and/or grocery allowance via Flash card, so you choose where and how to use it
- Mobility support or transportation voucher, with flexibility to fit your daily routine
- Free on-site parking for those who prefer to commute by car
- Chartered transportation for greater comfort and safety
- Life insurance for additional security for you and your family
- Bereavement support (Amparo) to assist you and your family with administrative, financial and emotional challenges after the loss of a loved one
- Birthday day off so you can celebrate with an extra day of rest
- Extended paternity or maternity leave
- Discount on car purchases from Kavak’s inventory, plus four low-cost maintenance checks according to our current policy