Principal Front End Engineer (React) - [Remote UK] in Birmingham

At Halfords, our mission is to inspire and support a lifetime of motoring and cycling. As a specialist retailer, we lead the market through customer-driven innovation and a distinct product range. We are dedicated to providing our customers with an integrated, unique, and convenient service experience—from e-bike and electric vehicle servicing to on-demand solutions. Our commitment is to foster customer loyalty by offering compelling reasons to keep coming back to our stores, ensuring a lifetime of motoring and cycling enjoyment.

Halfords is quickly becoming a digital services business. In addition to being a leading UK retailer, Halfords has now developed a market leading field service management platform that enables businesses to deliver their complex services to customers through an end-to-end digital solution. The platform is deployed throughout Halfords stores, garages and their mobile business. This SaaS division is called Avayler (Avayler.com). As the leading global Garage Management and Mobile Van software platform, we help customers become operationally efficient and compliant through our advanced technology.

As Principal Engineer, you will play a critical role in shaping the future of our frontend platform and the way our engineering teams build, scale, and deliver products globally. Working closely with the Head of Engineering, you will bring deep React expertise to the most complex challenges in the business, helping teams move faster while raising the bar on quality, performance, and maintainability. You will be a trusted technical authority, influencing architectural decisions and setting standards that enable consistent, high-quality delivery.

This is a hands-on role, balancing strategic thinking with real-world problem solving. You will design and build new features, tackle core frontend challenges, and explore emerging technologies, including AI-assisted development to improve how we work. Through mentoring, guilds, and knowledge sharing, you will elevate frontend capability across the organisation, promoting best practice in React, TypeScript, testing, accessibility, and performance.

Key responsibilities:

• Act as the technical authority for our React frontend, setting standards and best practice across architecture, performance, accessibility, and testing.
• Work closely with the Head of Engineering to shape the frontend roadmap and focus effort where it delivers the most value.
• Design and build scalable, maintainable frontend solutions, balancing long-term architecture with pragmatic delivery.
• Lead the development of complex features and resolve high-impact issues across the frontend stack.
• Champion modern React patterns, tooling, and frameworks, staying ahead of industry trends and applying them pragmatically.
• Establish and evolve component libraries, design systems, and frontend architectural patterns.
• Mentor and support frontend engineers through coaching, code reviews, and technical leadership.
• Run and contribute to frontend guilds and communities of practice to share knowledge and upskill teams.
• Promote and embed the effective use of AI-assisted development tools to improve speed, quality, and developer experience.
• Drive quality through strong ownership of testing strategies, performance optimisation, and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Backend teams to deliver high-quality user experiences end to end.
• Support the evolution of build pipelines, deployment practices, and frontend infrastructure to enable smooth, reliable delivery.

About you:

• Proven expert in React with deep experience building and scaling complex, production-grade frontend applications.
• Strong background in modern frontend architecture, including component libraries, design systems, and performance optimisation.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and influencing engineers, raising standards through coaching, code review, and technical leadership.
• Comfortable operating at a strategic level while remaining hands-on with complex technical challenges.
• Experienced in driving best practice across testing, accessibility, and frontend quality.
• Passionate about continuous improvement, with a strong interest in emerging technologies and AI-assisted development tools.
• Pragmatic problem-solver who can simplify complexity and make sound technical decisions in a fast-moving environment.
• Collaborative by nature, able to work closely with Product, Design, and Engineering to deliver high-quality user experiences.
• Looking for a role in a maturing scale-up where you can bring stability, shape standards, and have a lasting technical impact.

A fair and competitive salary evaluated against market data, annual discretionary bonus scheme, pension, life assurance, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave. Commitment and dedication to your ongoing personal and professional development. We help you to own and grow your potential so you can be at your best in your current role and to support your future career aspirations. You will have access to a wealth of employee discounts across the Halfords suite of products and services. Wellbeing and inclusion are at the heart of our colleague experience. We offer resources and ongoing support to enhance your wellbeing at work and active Colleague Networks supporting inclusion initiatives across Halfords.