Staff Software Engineer - FRONTEND

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, software engineers design, implement, and maintain software systems that improve government services for users. Frontend engineers go further by shaping how those systems are experienced — creating intuitive, accessible, and reliable interfaces that help people navigate complex information and complete critical tasks with confidence.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is expanding its Digital Services team during an exciting period of growth, focused on delivering modern, user-centered digital products, exploring AI-enablement opportunities, and building long-term technical capacity.

In this role, you'll hit the ground running in a fast-moving, cross-functional environment — coordinating immediately with researchers, designers, engineers, and government stakeholders to deliver against an ambitious vision from day one. This role sits at the intersection of product strategy, change management, enablement, and service delivery, and demands someone who can orient quickly, build trust across teams, and ensure new digital capabilities are not only built, but understood, usable, and sustained.

What you’ll do

• Build and maintain modern, user-centered web applications that support ACF’s digital transformation
• Collaborate with designers, researchers, product managers, and backend engineers to deliver cohesive, accessible, and performant experiences
• Implement responsive, data-rich interfaces that help users make sense of complex information
• Integrate APIs, state management, and asynchronous data flows to create seamless interactions
• Contribute to the design and evolution of ACF’s frontend architecture and component libraries
• Apply lean-agile engineering practices such as API-first design, version control, automated testing, and continuous integration
• Identify and address technical debt, performance issues, and opportunities for improvement
• Evaluate and incorporate emerging technologies, including AI-enabled features, where they enhance user experience
• Promote maintainability and long-term scalability through clear documentation and knowledge sharing

Minimum qualifications

• Ability to write clean, reusable, and maintainable code with strong attention to testing and reliability
• Experience building modern web applications using React (or equivalent single-page frameworks) and component-driven design
• Strong understanding of frontend architecture, state management, asynchronous data fetching, and API integration patterns
• Experience collaborating with backend teams (especially Python-based) to deliver cohesive user experiences
• Familiarity with building secure, compliant software and mitigating common vulnerabilities
• Experience designing and implementing interactive, data-rich UIs (e.g., filters, tagging, dashboards)
• Familiarity with integrating AI- or ML-driven features such as search, tagging, or summarization
• Experience contributing to build and deployment pipelines (e.g., CI/CD, AWS Amplify, or similar)
• Understanding how to design performant, reliable, and user-centered systems
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passionate about creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with our core values
• Ability to travel for work from time to time

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience using AWS hosting and build services such as CloudFront, S3, Amplify, or Cognito
• Familiarity with data visualization frameworks (e.g., D3.js, Plotly, Chart.js)
• Experience designing natural language interfaces (e.g., search, tagging, annotation tools)
• Experience with design systems such as Storybook, Figma, USWDS, or GOV.UK Design System
• Experience contributing to accessibility-first or government digital service projects
• Understanding of frontend performance optimization and observability tooling
• Experience collaborating effectively within remote teams
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote-team environment

Other requirements

• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
• You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
• As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance.
• You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.
• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Software Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Senior Software Engineer: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff Software Engineer: $170,000–$203,000

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.