Lead Software Engineer, React

Lead Software Engineer, React 

Delivering consistent, high-quality user experiences across our internal front-end applications is key to enabling Chick-fil-A’s continued growth. We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to help us build and evolve our internal React component library and design system, which increasingly serves as a foundation for front-end development across Digital Transformation and Technology. This is a high-impact role for someone who is passionate about front-end engineering, cares deeply about developer experience, and is eager to mentor and lead a team of engineers. 

You’ll help shape the technical vision for our component ecosystem, collaborate across engineering and design disciplines, and ensure the experiences we deliver are consistent, accessible, and delightful for the internal teams who depend on them. 

This role will live within our Digital Transformation and Technology (DTT) department and work closely with an Agile team including other software engineers, product owners, scrum masters, UX designers, quality engineers, and platform engineers. This role requires deep expertise in React and front-end engineering, as well as a strong understanding of design system principles. In this role, you can expect to build deep technical expertise around component architecture, design-to-code workflows, and scalable front-end patterns that serve internal development teams across the organization. 

As the Lead Software Engineer, you will work to deliver the design, architecture, and continued evolution of our internal design system and component library to directly improve the front-end development velocity and consistency across our internal applications, including the following outcomes:

• A cohesive, well-documented component library shaped by close collaboration with UX designers and consuming engineering teams.
• A scalable design system that enforces visual consistency, accessibility standards, and design token adoption across present and future front-end applications. 

Our Flexible Future model offers a healthy mix of working in person and virtually, strengthening key elements of the Chick-fil-A culture by fostering collaboration and community.

• Serve as the technical lead for a cross-functional team focused on building and evolving our internal React component library and design system.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, UX designers, and consuming engineering teams to shape components and design system standards that serve internal front-end developers across the organization.
• Make architectural decisions and guide the team in implementing scalable, maintainable React components and design system infrastructure.
• Mentor and coach engineers through code reviews, technical design sessions, and pairing.
• Ensure performance, reliability, and security best practices are baked into everything we ship.
• Partner with platform and infrastructure teams to ensure efficient CI/CD pipelines for component publishing, versioning, and front-end application deployments.
• Contribute to shaping our design system strategy, identifying opportunities for component reuse, accessibility improvements, visual regression testing automation, and Storybook-driven documentation.
• Value team excellence over individual productivity. 

Note - Working in a DevOps model, this opportunity includes both building and running solutions that could require off hours support. This support is shared amongst the team members to cover weekends and weeknights. The goal is to design for failure and, using cloud-native infrastructure patterns, automate responses to possible issues so they can be worked during normal hours.

• 5+ years of professional software development experience
• 3+ years of hands-on experience building production React applications and/or component libraries 
• Deep understanding of JavaScript/TypeScript, component architecture patterns, and modern front-end tooling
• Experience with Storybook for component documentation, development, and testing workflows
• Familiarity with Next.js (SSR/SSG) and modern front-end build tooling (e.g., Vite, Webpack, Turborepo)
• Proven experience leading teams or technical initiatives
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, and testable code
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and npm package publishing workflows
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate cross-functionally
• A track record of mentoring and coaching other engineers
• Comfortable working in Agile/Scrum environments
• Passion for building products that solve real-world problems for end users
• Experience with source control, including merging and branching in Git

• Experience with CSS-in-JS solutions (e.g., styled-components, Emotion) or utility-first CSS frameworks (e.g., Tailwind CSS)
• Familiarity with design token management, theming systems, or design-to-code tooling (e.g., Figma Tokens, Style Dictionary)
• Previous experience working on platform, enablement, or shared-services engineering teams
• Experience with visual regression testing tools (e.g., Chromatic, Percy) and accessibility auditing (e.g., axe, Lighthouse)
• Experience with test-driven development, continuous integration.
• Experience working with an agile development methodology.
• Experience with Unix/Linux
• Experience with monorepo tooling and managing shared package dependencies at scale (e.g., Nx, Turborepo, Lerna)
• Familiarity with web performance best practices, Core Web Vitals, and front-end observability tooling
• Exposure to server-side rendering patterns, API integration within Next.js applications, or consuming RESTful or GraphQL APIs from front-end applications