Frontend Engineer

About Tailscale

Tailscale is innovating the Internet by creating software that enables secure, seamless connection of people and devices worldwide. Serving a broad audience from individual hobbyists to large corporations, Tailscale products simplify network protection and internal tool access. Founded in 2019 as a fully remote company, Tailscale is supported by prominent investors including Accel, CRV, Insight, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital.

Role Overview

We are looking for a dedicated full-time Frontend Engineer to join our expanding team. You will lead the architecture and technical roadmap of Tailscale's upcoming web console, develop frontend infrastructure that supports multiple product integrations in a unified platform, and focus particularly on identity-related frontend systems such as authentication, session handling, and secure cross-service integrations.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and guide the frontend structure for Tailscale’s new console, covering app layout, routing, state management, conventions, and maintainability.
• Develop and oversee cross-origin authentication and session systems including auth flows, CORS policies, CSRF protection, cookie/session handling, and multi-environment support.
• Build and maintain a frontend hosting platform capable of supporting various Tailscale products with a consistent development process.
• Implement shared infrastructure, conventions, and design patterns to unify diverse product functionalities into a cohesive console experience.
• Create frontend architectural patterns and tools enabling engineers without frontend expertise to build accessible and production-ready user interfaces effectively.
• Collaborate closely with Product Design to translate complex infrastructure and identity concepts into user-friendly experiences.
• Work with Growth, Design, Product, and engineering teams on experimentation, feature rollouts, A/B testing, and analytics instrumentation.
• Define and enhance the frontend testing framework, including integration and end-to-end tests, improving developer experience and reducing complexity for teams.
• Partner with infrastructure and tooling teams to improve development workflows, build pipelines, deployment previews, release processes, and reliability.
• Provide technical leadership through code reviews, mentoring, and establishing platform best practices.
• Participate in the on-call rotation periodically to respond to and resolve incidents.

Candidate Profile

• Extensive experience developing scalable production React applications.
• Solid grasp of web standards including HTTP, browser security boundaries, authentication, cookies, storage, CORS, and CSRF mechanisms.
• Background in creating internal platforms, frameworks, or shared libraries that facilitate product deployments with robust guardrails.
• Experience unifying frontend codebases under a consolidated platform vision.
• Strong architectural judgment regarding standardization, abstraction, and system complexity management.
• Expertise in designing scalable frontend testing methodologies enhancing product quality while minimizing incidental complexity.
• Proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams including design, growth, infrastructure, and tooling.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate tradeoffs and influence technical directions across teams.
• High level of ownership and autonomy, adept at identifying key challenges and navigating ambiguity.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing frontend tooling and codebases optimized for AI-assisted development, facilitating LLM-based UI creation.
• Familiarity with design systems, component libraries, and integrating design tools with production UI workflows.
• Experience with feature flags, analytics frameworks, experimentation systems, and progressive delivery strategies.
• Background working on identity, admin, B2B SaaS, or security-sensitive frontend surfaces.

Compensation and Benefits

Tailscale maintains equitable compensation practices offering a competitive package comprising base salary, equity incentives, and comprehensive benefits. The salary range for this position is CAD 242,540 to CAD 302,840 annually. Benefits include immediate health, dental, and vision coverage; matched retirement contributions up to 0.75% of eligible compensation; remote work flexibility with coworking space options; paid parental leave; home office setup allowances; professional development funding; generous paid time off; and opportunities for in-person retreats and team gatherings.

Diversity and Inclusion

We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, especially those who may not meet every qualification listed. Our recruitment process is designed to be inclusive, with accommodations available upon request.

Additional Information

As a fully remote company, this role is based in Canada. The position requires occasional on-call participation. Our hiring process involves AI-assisted screening tools, though all employment decisions are made by humans.