Front-End Engineer

KQED is for everyone who wants to be more. Our television, radio, digital media and educational services change lives for the better and help individuals and communities achieve their full potential.

The KQED product group spearheads the development of digital experiences across responsive web and native mobile apps. We work with urgency and passion to create content-centric experiences that inform, educate, and inspire our audiences.

Our next Front-End Engineer brings creative solutions for front end coding on various platforms including mobile web, native mobile apps, and desktop. The Front-End Engineer will leverage existing technologies and open source projects to create smart, fast, intuitive experiences for users. The Front-End Engineer will work with the UX team as well as part of the larger product team and work collaboratively with the engineering team. KQED is looking for a person with strong HTML, CSS/SASS/LESS, jQuery and JavaScript experience who enjoys refining the user experience through micro-interactions, UI design patterns and high performing front end code.

The Front-End Engineer is expected to:

• Propose, develop requirements, prototype and execute new design and interaction concepts in collaboration with user experience, engineering and product management staff.
• Contribute to visual design of user interfaces.
• Work with web engineering team to integrate front end code with content management systems, application server, and database.
• Write front-end code utilizing JavaScript, AJAX, HTML5, CSS
• Develop applications in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS such as mobile optimized audio player or video player with management interface.
• Prepare documentation (including wireframes and CSS prototypes) describing how the proposed interface, concept, and design reflect the strategy and audience outlined for the site(s).
• Perform other essential duties as assigned.

Knowledge/Experience Required:

• Minimum three years experience designing and coding dynamic websites and apps using clean markup, robust CSS.
• Strong familiarity with current design trends in the digital space.
• Deep experience with jQuery.
• Familiarity with common data interchange formats and protocols: JSON, REST, AJAX, XML.
• Experience with Git.
• Experience using LESS or SCSS.
• Minimum two years experience with content management (CMS) software and blogging software. WordPress experience is required although we have Wordpress engineers for theme/template development.
• Keen user interface/experience sensibility; able to clearly communicate design/feature ideas to a designer or developer, or to execute on their own.
• Experience developing high performance websites and web applications for mobile platforms like iOS and Android.
• Excellent attention to detail; strong analytical, diagnostic, problem-solving, debugging and optimization skills.
• Ability to interact and communicate diplomatically with other team members, multiple internal departments, and management.
• Ability to work under deadline pressures.
• Examples and at least one sample of an effective document delivered in the past.
• Experience working with various project management tools such as Jira, Basecamp, Asana or similar as well as Illustrator, Omnigraffle, Balsamic or other wireframing tools.

Knowledge/Experience Desired:

• Angular, Ember, React or other JavaScript frameworks.
• Experience with Node.
• Interest in Creative Coding frameworks like OpenFrameworks, Cinder, Processing.
• D3 or other data visualization frameworks.
• Experience developing iOS and Android apps using Meteor, Cordova/PhoneGap or natively.
• Familiarity with or interest in public broadcasting a plus.
• Experience working in a demographically diverse news environment desired.
• Bachelor’s Degree preferred.