Imagine walking into a restaurant. 

You order your food, sit down, and take a look around. The lighting is soft, and the layout makes perfect sense. There’s an open kitchen window where you can see your dish being prepared. Everything feels right.

But behind that smooth experience, dozens of chaotic things are happening:

• A chef juggling orders
• A dishwasher clearing the trays
• And a manager tracking reservations

Frontend engineers are like the open kitchen window. They’re what your users see and touch. A good meal takes more than a nice plate. Same way, great frontend work takes skill, planning, and teamwork.

Let’s take a closer look at:

• What frontend engineers do
• Why they matter so much
• How to hire the right ones
• And how you can support them 

Why frontend engineers are so important

Quick test: open your company’s website. Or your product. Or any customer-facing tool your engineers have built. Now ask yourself: 

• Is it easy to use? 
• Do the buttons work? 
• Does the layout make sense? 
• And are there any weird visual bugs?

All of that, every moment of that experience, lives in the frontend.

Frontend engineers are responsible for the layer of your product that your users see and interact with. They solve deeply technical problems. And these sit right at the intersection of performance, design, accessibility, and usability.

When it’s good, your users barely notice. When it’s bad, they leave. In other words, frontend work is both invisible and critical. It makes or breaks how your company is perceived.

If you think they just craft pretty interfaces, think again

Frontend work is no longer just HTML and CSS. Modern frontend engineers deal with:

• State management: they build systems that remember what a user clicked or where they were on the page
• APIs and data: they make calls to backend services and shape raw data into useful interfaces
• Performance optimization: they make sure things load quickly, even on slow devices
• Design implementation: they turn design into features that look good and work well
• Cross-browser/device compatibility: they ensure things run properly everywhere
• Accessibility: they make the product usable for people with disabilities
• Tooling and frameworks: React, Vue, Angular, TypeScript, Webpack, and a dozen other things that evolve every year

And this is serious software engineering.

A good frontend engineer needs to blend creativity with logic. They’re making thousands of micro decisions to support a great user experience. Their work demands empathy, technical depth, and meticulous attention to detail.

Hidden challenges frontend engineers face

From the outside, frontend work can look simpler than it is. That’s usually the root of the problem.

Many frontend engineers face:

• Underestimation: being treated as “just the pixel person” rather than a true engineer
• Inconsistent designs: dealing with incomplete or contradictory mockups
• Shifting requirements: making visual features that later get deprioritized
• Lack of access: getting looped in after all the backend decisions are made
• Blame: being the first point of failure when something looks off, even when the issue is elsewhere
• Tech churn: working in an ecosystem where tools and frameworks change extremely fast

On top of that, their work is hyper-visible. Everyone notices a UI bug. Few notice a well-architected solution that prevented it. Supporting your frontend team means understanding that they face these challenges. And acting early to fix them.

How to measure success, “frontend speaking”

Frontend success is hard to quantify but not impossible. You can use these metrics to spot excellence:

• Bug rates: especially regressions in UI
• Performance: time to first render, time to interactive, etc.
• Design implementation: how closely does the UI match the intended design?
• Accessibility audits: how usable is your product for all users?
• Cross-browser/device QA: does the experience hold up everywhere?
• Team feedback: do designers, PMs, and backend engineers find them collaborative and responsive?

However, the truth is raw metrics don’t always tell the complete story. Look at their decision-making: 

• Are your frontend engineers pushing back when a UX pattern doesn’t make sense? 
• Are they proposing smarter implementations? 
• Are they thinking about long-term maintainability? 
• And are they the kind of person others go to for questions?

Frontend engineering is also about trade-offs. Success is not perfection – it’s context-aware and thoughtful solutions.

Hiring the right frontend engineer

If you hired a frontend engineer just by asking a few simple questions, it likely didn’t work out.

Here’s what to look for instead:

• Deep understanding of JavaScript: not just syntax, but how the language works
• Strong portfolio or GitHub examples: real-world projects that show how they think
• Component-based thinking: can they break down interfaces into reusable pieces?
• Empathy for users: do they care how things feel to use?
• Collaboration skills: have they worked with designers, PMs, and backend engineers before?
• Performance awareness: do they understand how their code affects speed?

And here’s what not to overvalue:

• Framework worship: someone who only knows React is not automatically strong
• Pixel perfection obsession: fine detail is great, but product sense matters more
• “I do everything” full-stack claims: these often mask shallow knowledge
• Overly academic projects: “toy apps” can hide how someone performs under real-world constraints

If you’re unsure, have them walk you through a real project. Ask yourself: Why did they choose that solution? What were the trade-offs? What went wrong? The best frontend engineers will light up when they answer.

How to support your frontend engineering team

Hiring great frontend engineers is only half the job. You need to make sure they can thrive.

Here’s how you can do that:

1. Involve them early

Loop them in during feature definition and not just at the end. They’ll catch design flaws, suggest better ideas (and save you time).

2. Clarify priorities

Frontend engineers usually juggle tiny design fixes with deep architectural changes. Be clear on what’s actually important.

3. Create consistent design systems

Inconsistencies in spacing, typography, and layout create balls of frustration. Invest in a component library or design system. Better yet, have your frontend engineers help build it.

4. Pair them with designers

Frontend engineers and designers are natural partners. Help them build strong, collaborative relationships through:

• A shared language
• Regular design-engineering critiques
• And joint problem-solving sessions

5. Reward “invisible work”

Performance tweaks, refactors, and a11y improvements don’t always get noticed. But they are crucial. Be sure to highlight them in demos and reviews.

6. Encourage mentorship

Frontend is a fast-moving space. Let your senior engineers mentor juniors. Give people time to stay current. Celebrate knowledge-sharing.

7. Be an advocate of their role

Speak up when others minimize their importance. A single bad decision can create weeks of extra work.

8. Avoid last-minute overwhelm

Many teams still treat frontend as the "make it look nice" step or cosmetics. Frontend engineers want to build beautiful, functional, performant things. Give them the space, support, and respect to do that.

The short version: good frontend makes great products possible

Frontend engineers build the interface your users interact with. And this is complex, highly visible work that blends design, logic, and user empathy.

They’re responsible for everything – from data integration to accessibility and performance. 

People often overlook their work, but bad frontend can make users leave right away. Do not think success lies in a pretty UI. Success is thoughtful architecture, clean code, low bug rates, performance, and collaboration. 

When hiring, look for real-world projects, deep JavaScript knowledge, and user empathy. Not just React skills or perfect portfolios.

Remember to support your frontend engineers by:

• Involving them early
• Providing clear priorities
• And rewarding their often invisible contributions

Because they’re not just frontend engineers. They’re the layer between your product and your users. Make sure they’re set up for success. 

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Originally published on Medium.com