Staff Software Engineer, Frontend
Block Labs
Hirezar Summary for South African Applicants
This fully remote full time position at Block Labs explicitly welcomes applicants based in South Africa. This role is suited for senior-level professionals. As a remote position, you can work from anywhere in South Africa — whether you're based in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, or a smaller town.
Job Description
AboutBlock Labs
Block Labsis a premier technology studio operating at the bleeding edge ofWeb3, Artificial Intelligence, and iGaming. We don't just ship features; we engineer high-scale, production-grade platforms that power the next generation of digital products.
We are a collective of senior engineers, product strategists, and builders who refuse to compromise on architecture. Whether we are designing autonomous multi-agent AI systems, building decentralized financial infrastructure, or architecting high-frequency iGaming platforms, our standard is excellence.
We move fast, but we build for the long term. If you are looking to work alongside a team that values deep technical expertise, thoughtful system design, and product ownership,Block Labsis where you belong.
The role
We are building the frontend of a multi-brand consumer platform in React, Next.js and TypeScript: one codebase serving several brands, where launching a brand should be a matter of configuration, not a copy. You will be the most senior frontend engineer in the company and the person the platform’s UI depends on.We don’t hire into squads. We work as a small number of very strong individual contributors, each owning a product end to end and shipping with AI agents at a pace that used to take a team. You get an outcome and constraints, not a backlog: you find the decisions nobody has made, scope the work, build it, ship it and stay accountable for how it behaves in production. Product ideas often arrive as working prototypes built with AI tools by people outside engineering. Your job is to steer them into production, not to reject them or rebuild them from zero.
Key Responsibilities:
* Own the frontend end to end: architecture, conventions, quality bar and production behaviour of a multi-brand platform, with no spec handed to you.
Own the frontend end to end: architecture, conventions, quality bar and production behaviour of a multi-brand platform, with no spec handed to you.
* Make adding a brand a configuration change: theming, brand-aware routing and content, and clean boundaries between shared and brand-specific code, all on a live product.
Make adding a brand a configuration change: theming, brand-aware routing and content, and clean boundaries between shared and brand-specific code, all on a live product.
* Build and own the design system and component library that engineers, designers and AI-assisted prototyping all draw from.
Build and own the design system and component library that engineers, designers and AI-assisted prototyping all draw from.
* Turn product prototypes into production features fast, and build the workflow and tooling that make this repeatable.
Turn product prototypes into production features fast, and build the workflow and tooling that make this repeatable.
* Ship with AI coding agents every day as your main way of working, with the checks that keep quality high at agent speed, and raise the bar for how others use them.
Ship with AI coding agents every day as your main way of working, with the checks that keep quality high at agent speed, and raise the bar for how others use them.
* Ship consumer-facing UI with real attention to detail, performance and accessibility.
Ship consumer-facing UI with real attention to detail, performance and accessibility.
* Take UX and product concerns straight to the people who own the product, with alternatives and working examples, not just objections.
Take UX and product concerns straight to the people who own the product, with alternatives and working examples, not just objections.
About You:
* 8+ years building production consumer-facing web applications, several of them at Staff or equivalent ownership.
8+ years building production consumer-facing web applications, several of them at Staff or equivalent ownership.
* You have taken a frontend from a rough brief to production and owned it, and you can say exactly what was yours, what was your team’s and what was your agents’.
You have taken a frontend from a rough brief to production and owned it, and you can say exactly what was yours, what was your team’s and what was your agents’.
* AI coding agents are how you build, not a helper. You have your own setup and can say precisely where agents make you faster, where they produce plausible but wrong output, and how you catch it.
AI coding agents are how you build, not a helper. You have your own setup and can say precisely where agents make you faster, where they produce plausible but wrong output, and how you catch it.
* Deep expertise in React, Next.js and modern TypeScript, with clear opinions on rendering strategies and when each is the wrong choice.
Deep expertise in React, Next.js and modern TypeScript, with clear opinions on rendering strategies and when each is the wrong choice.
* Hands-on experience building or re-architecting multi-brand, multi-tenant or white-label frontends.
Hands-on experience building or re-architecting multi-brand, multi-tenant or white-
Tips for South African Applicants
Timezone Advantage
South Africa (SAST, UTC+2) overlaps well with European business hours and has a few hours of overlap with US East Coast. Mention your timezone flexibility in your application.
Salary in Context
Even without a listed salary, international remote roles typically pay 2-3x more than equivalent local positions in South Africa due to the exchange rate advantage.
Application Tips
Tailor your CV to international standards — use a clean format, highlight remote work experience, and include your English proficiency. Many SA applicants succeed by emphasising their strong work ethic and cultural adaptability.
Load Shedding Preparedness
If you're applying for a remote role, having a backup power solution (UPS, inverter, or generator) and mobile data as a backup internet connection shows employers you're prepared for South Africa's infrastructure challenges.
Related remote job searches
About Block Labs
Block Labs is a company in the Developer industry that hires remote workers from South Africa.