Front-End Developer

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Job Description

Tofugu is looking for a experienced Front End Engineer ("senior" level or above, using the standard nomenclatures) who is near the top of the front-end develpoment field, or has the potential to get there. Along with a very high overall skill in front-end development, candidates will ideally have a ton of React experience, too. Plus, they should be fluent in HTML, CSS, and Javascript. WaniKani is built on Ruby on Rails, so some background or ability there is a plus. Being a Japanese learner, and/or a past or present WaniKani user, would be great too (but is not required).

This role will work closely with the rest of the Engineering Team (currently consisting of four members) to build and implement new features as well as update old ones. Right now, we are refactoring our front-end code to make things more flexible for the future. Once that's done, or at least done enough, you'll be working on big new features that we think will have a direct positive impact on the tens and hundreds of thousands of learners reading Tofugu and using WaniKani. You'll be a big part of that!

Responsibilities

• You will help to refactor our front-end code to React, getting it ready — and making it flexible enough for — new features we're working toward.


• You will build new features designed by the Product and Design team.


• You will pitch and develop some of your own projects, updates, fixes, and the like, and implement them (this is where being a Japanese learner, or user of WaniKani, comes in handy).


• You will work with the Front-End Architect role to implement and evolve our standards around how we code in the front-end.


• You will code with accessibility in mind. Our properties aren't perfect in this regard, but we do our best to code for different people and different circumstances.


• You will code with security in mind, too. Our users' private information is, of course, extremely important!


• You will perform code reviews and pull requests for other front-end engineer(s). You should be able to provide good feedback, and help bring up the quality of our overall codebase.


• You will push up the quality of not only our code and how we write it, but also influence what we build and how we help learners to learn Japanese.

Qualifications

• You have very deep experience working and coding in React, as well as Javascript, HTML, and CSS.


• You're near the top of the front-end development field — or have that potential.


• You have a decent eye for design, color, and whitespace. A lot of design will be done by our designer, but design shouldn't happen in a vaccuum.


• You have some UI/UX experience. UI/UX happens mostly in our project spec and design steps, but you should be able to catch UI/UX fumbles, or at least have an opinion about it.


• You enjoy working with and collaborating with a team, but you're also able to work on your own and get important work done. If left alone, you take the initiative to figure out how to create value.


• You can speak your mind while at the same time graciously (and happily) accepting feedback.


• You code pragmatically. That is, you get the work done with minimal, well-documented, clean code. Your code performs well, too.


• You seek out ways to create value, even if left alone. You help others to find value, too. You know what is important progress-driving work, and what is not.


• You have the ability to focus, working without distraction for substantial chunks of time. Every full-time employee at Tofugu (our full time is 30 hours) is expected to do 3-4 hours of focused, uninterrupted work on important, progress-driving tasks per work day — that's around 2/3rds-3/4ths of their work time. We're looking for people who can identify what is important for actual progress, then do it, even if it isn't always "fun." Don't worry, there's "fun" stuff to do, too.

About Tofugu

Almost everybody at Tofugu has taken a Japanese (or English, or French, or whatever) class or had tutors. But we experienced a lack of explanation and had to move at the speed of the slowest students. We learned kanji by writing them hundreds of times because "that's just how it's always been done." We all thought there must be a better, more effective way to learn Japanese, even if it's not "traditional." So we began writing. We learned how humans actually learn and made WaniKani for learning kanji, because sometimes tradition is overrated.

To supplement our studies, we turned to textbooks and the Internet. Though practical, we found them to be overly-dumbed-down. "This is just the way things are," they said. When we dug deeper into linguistic papers, we found the answers we were looking for, but they were way too weedy and technical for the everyday Japanese learner. So we kept writing, and we've been bridging the gap between Japanese linguistics and you, the Japanese learner, ever since.

We are building tools and writing about the Japanese language for our past-selves: people who were (and still are) excited about learning. Then we are sharing everything we can with you. We want to be the Japanese teacher we never had, for you.