We are looking for a Frontend Engineer (m/f/d) to play a leading role in the development of our front end (based on Backstage, written in TypeScript with React). You will not only contribute maintainable code that meets best practices and high standards but also work towards enabling all of our engineers to contribute confidently towards evolving our interfaces into the most delightful way to manage Kubernetes clusters, our observability platform, applications running in clusters, and our agentic platform.
Giant Swarm is an open-source infrastructure management platform used by modern enterprises. Our vision is to empower developers around the world to ship great products.
You will join us in making Kubernetes and our interfaces more understandable for our customers and end-users
Collaborate with our teams and our UX designer to architect, build and ship new user experiences for our enterprise users
You find opportunities for improvement, both user-facing and in the codebase
You will make sure that in one year our web interface is highly regarded in the Kubernetes community as the most beautiful and desired tool for managing clusters and applications
Educate your peers into good engineering practices
Our Stack
Frontend: TypeScript, Node.JS, React, TanStack Query, Webpack, Jest, Backstage UI, Storybook, Sentry
Backend: Backstage (Node.JS), Kubernetes API Server
Robust fundamental software engineering skills like e. g. problem decomposition, designing abstractions, systems thinking, testing, version control
Experience with automation like CI/CD pipelines
Deep previous experience covering most parts of our stack (see above)
Understanding of standards like OAuth, OpenID Connect (OIDC)
Basic experience with running applications in Kubernetes, building Helm charts, and container images
Intimate knowledge of the whole web stack; you understand how all the pieces fit together (front-end, database, network layer, etc.) and how they impact the performance of your application.
You have experience with agentic software engineering, and are willing to make agentic software engineering (using tools like Claude Code) your default way of working.
You apply platform and cross-team conventions and standards to your work, to ease collaboration and automation (e. g. conventional commits) and drive alignment where needed
You feel responsible for everything you ship and you pride yourself on clean code, precise documentation, and a perfect product.
Good communication, project management and time management skills
You are thrilled about delivering a B2B product that shines through reliability, dependability, usability and accessibility.
The other team members are located in Europe (CET/CEST timezone), thus, your main timezone should be somewhere between +/- 2 hours CET to ensure good communication.
Nice to Have
Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification.
Besides JavaScript/TypeScript, you have programming skills in a language of choice (not necessarily ours, but knowing Go or another statically typed language is a plus)
We’re a fully remote company and use a formula-based salary calculator to determine starting salaries, factoring in location, experience, and responsibility. This approach helps us avoid pay gaps (e.g., gender pay gap) by basing compensation on objective criteria rather than negotiation. Because we apply a location factor, the actual figure for hires outside Cologne will differ from the reference range above, and the total package may include components beyond base salary (e.g., equity, benefits). We’re publishing this range to comply with the EU Pay Transparency Directive. Your recruiter will walk you through how the calculator applies to your location and level.
Salary Range: €50,000 - €80,000
Every new team member changes the team. We love to learn from each other and we are looking for people who know things we don’t.
Becoming part of Giant Swarm means that, by extension, you also become part of the Cloud Native community. We actively contribute to upstream projects and our quarterly hackathons will give you space to work on out-of-the-box projects. Occasionally, when we, as a team, want to fully focus on one project, we scratch all meetings and routines for a certain time to better focus during our hive-sprints.
Continuous learning is important to us - we foster this through bi-yearly personal development talks, a budget for training/certifications/coaching as well as regular feedback talks and workshops. Our teams are cross- functional and collaboration is key.
Nothing crazy, but useful Basics: We currently operate on a 32 hour workweek (or 4 day workweek, you decide!). We don't count holidays but set a minimum number; You choose your own hard- and software; As a company that has almost, if not more, kids than employees, family-friendliness is crucial to us and paid parental leave is a no-brainer; We pay monthly perks that cover your costs for working remotely; We meet twice a year as an entire company and (if possible) see conferences as an important place to catch up with team members; We aim to be fully transparent (finance, salaries) unless it hurts people and trust you, based on this to make the best decisions
A note on the use of AI in our hiring process: real people read every application, no AI screening, no automated filters. We build tools, we use tools, we get excited about tools. We also know better than most that the best ones change what’s possible. What we’re looking for is how you really think, what you’ve built, and how you see the world. Using AI is fine - just don't miss the chance to let us get to know you. After all, humans are way more fun to meet at our onsites!
We failed in exactly describing our way to approach important company elements that can be described with ‘buzzwords’ such as agile mindset, cross-functional teams, self-organization, value of the individual or trust & teamwork. However, we truly care about them, we live them and we constantly iterate on them. Some snippets about how we do this are posted in our blog but by far not all of them.
Important note: We are not hiring job descriptions. We hire humans. :) We welcome applications from everybody, regardless ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or age. When you apply for a role at Giant Swarm, we will also consider you for other relevant roles, or ones that may come up in future if this one isn't a good fit at this time.
