Senior Front-End Engineer Must be SC cleared

Overview

Location: Hybrid - 2 days per week in the MOD offices in London and / or Bristol
Contract: Salaried 12-month FTC with full company benefits (NOT day rate)
Clearance: Must hold active SC clearance and have UK government / public sector experience

We are unable to consider candidates who don't have SC

The Company

At Amber Labs, we're a cutting-edge UK and European technology consultancy that empowers autonomy, promotes experimentation, and drives rapid learning to deliver exceptional value to our clients. Collaboration sits at the heart of our culture - every team member, regardless of role, works together to minimise risk and accelerate delivery. Our teams consist of highly skilled engineers, designers, analysts, and consultants dedicated to building world-class digital services for government and enterprise clients.

About the Role

We're seeking an experienced Senior Front-End Engineer to lead the development, modification, and maintenance of the front-end elements that users interact with across our government service platforms.

You'll work in multidisciplinary teams, collaborating with designers, developers, and user researchers to deliver accessible, performant, and standards-compliant services that meet the needs of real users and align with government digital standards.

This role is about setting the bar for front-end quality, defining best practices, ensuring accessibility and performance, and applying modern development techniques. You'll champion progressive enhancement, responsive design, and usability across multiple browsers and devices.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead front-end development across multiple digital service projects.
• Build accessible, responsive user interfaces that meet GDS accessibility and usability standards.
• Ensure products are built with modern web development techniques and principles.
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, including UX designers, back-end developers, and testers.
• Maintain high code quality through code reviews, testing, and documentation.
• Optimise web performance and maintain browser/device compatibility.
• Mentor junior developers and promote a culture of continuous improvement.
• Contribute to design system evolution and reusable component libraries.

Key Skills & Experience

• Proven experience as a front-end developer in production and prototype environments.
• Strong proficiency in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript (including Node.js, ReactJS, ExpressJS, Mongoose).
• Experience with templating and UI frameworks such as Nunjucks, Freemarker, Bootstrap, LESS, and SASS.
• Working knowledge of CI/CD tooling such as Git, GitLab CI, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, and Artifactory.
• Deep understanding of accessibility, progressive enhancement, and performance optimisation.
• Experience building services that perform efficiently across multiple devices and browsers.
• Strong understanding of UX principles and user-centred design.
• Experience working in Agile delivery teams.

Clearance Requirement

• Must hold active SC clearance
• We are unable to consider candidates requiring visa sponsorship at this time.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonus structure.
• Opportunity to work on impactful government digital services.
• Hybrid and flexible working arrangements.
• Private medical insurance (Aviva).
• Company pension plan (Nest).
• 25 days annual leave plus UK bank holidays.
• Access to Perkbox - employee discounts, perks, and wellbeing resources.
• Inclusive and collaborative company culture that values experimentation and innovation.
• Choice of device - PC or Mac.