Frontend Engineer

About Sailia

Sailia is the operating platform for activity businesses. We started in watersports and are expanding to become Shopify for experience led businesses. We’re driven by our customers and are all enthusiasts or instructors ourselves.

We build the tools centres actually run on: bookings & checkout, resource scheduling (kit, staff, sites), payments & refunds, customer management (waivers, vouchers, memberships), and reporting for utilisation, margin, and seasonality. When we say “the OS for activity centres,” we mean it.

We are product-led and customer-first. We ship and talk to customers daily, and keep the team small, high-trust, and fast. We’re a central London team; three days together in the office, two days for deep work.

• How we work

  • No corporate politics. Clear goals, direct feedback

  • Owners, not passengers. If something matters, you pick it up and make it happen.

  • Write → decide → ship.

  • Customer-close. Everyone talks to customers and can demo the product.

• You’ll thrive here if…

  • You’re very high agency. Working in startups isn’t for everyone. There is no ‘regular’ work day. It will be expected that you’re a Swiss Army Knife and are extremely proactive.

  • You’re a proactive driver. You can talk to customers, find what’s needed and solve the problem end to end. This mainly revolves around turning ambiguous problems into shipped features and measurable results. Things get pretty hard sometimes but you can always pull through to make a product that people love.

  • You’re a genuine builder. Whether it’s a new feature, new sales pipeline, or a new way of working, Sailia is just a team of people who like to build stuff even if there was no payday at the end. We started as a bootstrapped project that’s morphed into a well loved SaaS. If this resonates with you, you’ll do well!

  • You love talking to people. Every role is customer facing and it’s the main way we get things done, your co-workers are our customers.

  • You like small teams, high autonomy and working without any hierarchical egos.

  • You like jumping between projects when needed and are comfortable pairing with engineers/ops/customers.

  • You value speed, neat systems, and the satisfaction of seeing your work live next week.

• This probably isn’t for you if…

  • “That’s not my job” is a phrase you use.

  • You expect your manager to tell you exactly what to do.

  • You need a formal, corporate career ladder before you can do great work.

  • You want a role to direct other people more than to build and deliver outcomes.

  • You are not open to weird working hours.

• Why join

  • Help build the next Shopify, but for experiences

  • Trajectory: we’ve gone from bootstrapped to loved SaaS, backed by top UK investors

  • Impact: your code will directly power millions in bookings every year

  • Growth: opportunities to shape product, team, and engineering direction from the ground up

About the role

• As one of our founding engineers you’ll lead the evolution of Sailia’s UI – designing, building, and owning features end-to-end, from customer need to production.

• Building new features from end to end. Including ensuring the ongoing success of your work

• Share your knowledge with those around you, contributing to our learning culture.

• Own your projects, working in a small team to collaboratively deliver.

• Aim for greatness in everything you do, staying curious and inquisitive.

• Be part of a scaling team and organisation as we take on key industry players

We’re looking for someone who meets the minimum requirements to be considered for the role. If you meet these requirements, you are encouraged to apply. If you don’t quite meet the requirements still reach out, the main requirement is curiosity, a willingness to learn and a need to constantly ship.

Minimum requirements

• 5+ years of industry front-end development experience

• Be able to take features from 0 → 1

• Advanced knowledge of modern HTML, CSS, JS, React and Typescript

• Demonstrate experience building accessible websites and secure web applications that consume RESTful APIs and perform well.

• Love coding in front-end technologies – from navigating REST APIs to tweaking that last bit of CSS to get the design system just right.

• Familiarity with building and maintaining frontend components or libraries

• Experience with frontend build tools, module bundlers, package managers, and codemods

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to debug frontend issues

• Strong oral and written communication skills and ability to collaborate with designers, product managers, and product engineers

• Appreciation for the importance of good documentation — internal and external

Pay and benefits

The annual salary range for this role in the primary location is £75,000 – £100,000 + significant equity. This salary range is inclusive of several career levels and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience and qualifications.

Other benefits include:

• 30 days paid holiday + your birthday off

• Flexible core working hours, hybrid 3 days in our central London office

• Free gym membership + bike storage/shower access

• Very generous founding level EMI share options – real ownership in the company

• Annual leave is increased with length of service

• Open source contribution time