Principal Frontend Engineer

What do we do?

Paddle offers digital product companies a completely different approach to their payment infrastructure. Instead of assembling and maintaining a complex stack of payments-related apps and services, we’re a Merchant of Record for our customers. That means we take away 100% of the pain of payment fragmentation. It’s faster, safer, cheaper, and, above all, way better.

We’re backed by investors including KKR, FTV Capital, Kindred, Notion, and 83North and serve over 5000 software sellers in 245 territories globally.

The Role:

We're hiring a Principal Frontend Engineer to drive Paddle's company-wide technical vision for our frontend architecture and user experience to the next level. You'll act as the technical authority for foundational frontend architectural decisions, leading long-term, cross-team initiatives that shape how we design, build, and operate performant, and accessible user interfaces.

This is our most senior frontend technical position, where the depth of your technical expertise is as important as your leadership and influence qualities. You're excited about pushing the browser to it’s limits, comfortable owning complex technical decisions, and you’ll serve as the primary technical authority for frontend technologies across the organization. This role is ideal for someone who blends deep frontend systems expertise with strategic thinking and genuine empathy for our customers' experience.

What you'll do:

• Own and articulate the long-term technical vision and architectural strategy for Paddle's frontend ecosystem, aligning it with product and company goals.

• Define durable frontend architectural patterns, component libraries, and design systems that enable multiple teams to build consistently and safely at speed.

• Champion innovation in user experience technology, driving adoption of emerging frontend patterns that deliver measurable improvements in performance, accessibility, and developer velocity.

• Initiate and drive large, complex programmes of work that simplify frontend systems, improve performance metrics, and accelerate feature delivery.

• Serve as the decision-maker on high-stakes technical choices and architectural trade-offs in frontend technologies, ensuring durable, high-quality outcomes.

• Develop deep product fluency: become an expert in how our user interfaces deliver value to customers, connecting frontend architecture decisions to user satisfaction, conversion rates, and business metrics.

• Partner with Product, Design, and other stakeholders to turn ambitious user experience ideas into feasible technical implementations.

• Elevate frontend operational excellence: establish monitoring, performance profiling, and debugging patterns that drive teams to be proactive and data-driven in managing their frontend applications.

• Mentor Staff and Senior engineers, grow frontend technical leadership capability across the org, and champion engineering excellence and pragmatic simplicity.

• Represent Paddle's frontend technical direction in executive and cross-functional forums, communicating complex concepts with clarity and influence.

We’d love to hear from you if you:

• Bring deep expertise designing and evolving large-scale, business-critical frontend systems with strong foundations in performance, accessibility, and maintainability.

• Have extensive knowledge of frontend technology patterns and can demonstrate mastery of React, TypeScript, and modern JavaScript ecosystems.

• Have deep domain expertise in web service technologies relevant to frontend deployment (CDNs, monitoring tools like Sentry, performance optimization).

• Have a track record of leading company-level frontend technical strategy and delivering multi-quarter, cross-team initiatives with measurable impact.

• Operate comfortably as an architect, strategist, and problem solver: defining clear architectural direction for frontend systems, connecting user experience to business outcomes, and unblocking the hardest technical challenges.

• Are comfortable collaborating and getting hands-on with code when the situation calls for it, including code reviews and system design.

• Excel at navigating ambiguity, making sound trade-offs, and simplifying complex frontend systems into maintainable, evolvable designs.

• Have extensive experience leading large-scale initiatives and/or managing other engineers.

• Communicate with precision across audiences, from engineers to executives, building alignment and momentum through shared understanding.

• Champion frontend best practices including performance optimization, security, accessibility, and testing as first principles.

• Remain intellectually curious and genuinely passionate about web technology evolution.

• Empower and uplift others through mentorship, documentation, and setting high standards for frontend engineering practice.

Impact you’ll have in this role:

• Define and land frontend architectural patterns and platform strategies that improve developer velocity and product reliability across the company.

• Proactively identify and mitigate systemic frontend risks, guiding preventative architecture and process changes.

• Lead transformative programmes that retire frontend complexity, unlock new user experience capabilities, or enable step-change improvements in performance, accessibility, or development efficiency.

• Shape Paddle's engineering culture by modelling excellence, rigorous thinking, and inclusive collaboration.

• Drive adoption of modern frontend practices that directly impact user satisfaction and business metrics.

Everyone is welcome at Paddle

At Paddle, we’re committed to removing invisible barriers, both for our customers and within our own teams. We recognise and celebrate that every Paddler is unique and we welcome every individual perspective. As an inclusive employer, we don’t care if, or where, you studied, what you look like or where you’re from. We’re more interested in your craft, curiosity, passion for learning and what you’ll add to our culture. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t match every part of the job ad, especially if you’re part of an underrepresented group.

Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to better support you through the application process and in the workplace. We will do everything we can to support any accommodations needed. We’re committed to building a diverse team where everyone feels safe to be their authentic self. Let’s grow together.

Why you’ll love working at Paddle

We are a diverse, growing group of Paddlers across the globe who pride ourselves on our transparent, collaborative and respectful culture.

We live and breathe our values, which are:

Paddle for others

Paddle together

Paddle simply

We offer a full suite of benefits, including attractive salaries, stock options, retirement plans, private healthcare and well-being initiatives.

We are a ‘digital-first’ company, which means you can work remotely, from one of our stylish hubs, or even a bit of both! We offer all team members unlimited holidays and enhanced parental leave. We invest in learning and will help you with your personal development via constant exposure to new challenges, an annual learning fund, and regular internal and external training.