Senior Manager - Frontend

Who We Are

Ontic provides software that helps corporate and government security teams identify threats, assess risk, and respond faster to keep people and organizations safe. Its AI-powered Connected Intelligence Platform unifies security operations and data into a centralized system of record, enabling organizations to conduct risk assessments, protect against workplace violence, and manage threats and incidents more efficiently. Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies rely on Ontic to support security programs such as executive protection, threat intelligence, and corporate investigations. Learn more at ontic.ai or follow us on LinkedIn.

Role Summary

Ontic is hiring a Senior Manager, Frontend to lead frontend teams and major frontend engineering function. This leader will be accountable for delivery, technical direction, organizational effectiveness, and the growth of technical leaders.

The role requires deep hands-on knowledge of modern frontend technologies and architectures, coupled with strong people leadership. You will shape scalable frontend systems, establish engineering practices that improve quality and velocity, and ensure teams deliver secure, performant, accessible, and maintainable user experiences.

You will partner closely with Product, Design, Platform, and Engineering leadership to align frontend strategy, technical investments, and delivery plans with business priorities.

Key Responsibilities

Frontend Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Define and evolve the frontend technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards across teams.

• Guide architectural decisions involving React, TypeScript, component architecture, state management, frontend platform capabilities, design systems, API integrations, and application structure.

• Ensure frontend systems are scalable, secure, performant, accessible, maintainable, and consistent across product areas.

• Lead technical design and architecture reviews for significant frontend initiatives.

• Identify and drive solutions for systemic technical risks, architectural inconsistencies, technical debt, performance bottlenecks, and developer productivity challenges.

• Evaluate emerging frontend technologies, frameworks, and tools, and make pragmatic adoption decisions based on business and engineering value.

Engineering Delivery & Execution

• Lead planning and execution across multiple frontend teams, pods, or strategic initiatives.

• Establish clear delivery plans, milestones, operating rhythms, and accountability mechanisms.

• Balance delivery commitments, team capacity, technical investment, and organizational priorities.

• Proactively identify risks, remove roadblocks, manage dependencies, and communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.

• Improve predictability, quality, and execution consistency through strong engineering practices, metrics, and continuous improvement.

• Partner with Product and Design to translate product strategy into feasible, high-quality technical execution plans.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Build, lead, and develop high-performing frontend engineering teams.

• Coach emerging technical leaders to strengthen leadership capability across the organization.

• Own goal setting, performance reviews, career development, feedback, recognition, and performance management across teams.

• Drive structured hiring, onboarding, team design, capacity planning, and succession planning.

• Foster an inclusive, collaborative, accountable, and growth-oriented engineering culture.

• Create opportunities for engineers to build deep frontend expertise, technical ownership, and leadership skills.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Communication

• Build strong partnerships with Product, Design, Security, Platform, and business stakeholders.

• Communicate priorities, technical direction, delivery status, risks, and decisions clearly across teams and leadership levels.

• Facilitate effective technical and organizational discussions, resolve disagreements constructively, and drive alignment on shared outcomes.

• Connect frontend technology decisions to customer experience, business value, engineering health, and organizational goals.

• Promote a culture of transparent communication, constructive feedback, and continuous learning.

Frontend Quality, Reliability & Developer Experience

• Establish and evolve standards for accessibility, performance, reliability, testing, observability, and frontend security.

• Drive improvements in Core Web Vitals, browser compatibility, responsiveness, error monitoring, and production reliability.

• Promote scalable testing strategies across unit, integration, end-to-end, and visual regression testing.

• Improve frontend developer experience through shared tooling, CI/CD, documentation, reusable frameworks, and automation.

• Partner with Design and Platform teams to strengthen the design system and shared frontend capabilities.

Qualifications and Experience

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including substantial frontend engineering experience and 3+ years leading engineering teams.

• Deep expertise in JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, React, and modern frontend development practices.

• Strong experience designing and evolving frontend architectures for large-scale, customer-facing SaaS applications.

• Demonstrated knowledge of component systems, design systems, state management, frontend build tooling, API integration patterns, and browser performance.

• Experience leading multiple teams, a major engineering function, or a complex product area with significant frontend scope.

• Proven ability to hire, coach, develop, and retain senior technical talent.

• Strong experience with cross-team planning, delivery management, resource planning, and stakeholder alignment.

• Experience establishing engineering standards for accessibility, testing, observability, performance, reliability, and security.

• Ability to balance hands-on technical judgment with people leadership and business priorities.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical decisions to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Good to Have

• Experience building or scaling a design system, shared component library, or frontend platform.

• Experience with micro-frontends, modular frontend architectures, or large multi-application frontend ecosystems.

• Experience with frontend performance monitoring, error tracking, analytics, and observability tools.

• Familiarity with cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, feature flagging, and progressive delivery practices.

• Experience leading frontend modernization, migration, or platform adoption initiatives.

• Familiarity with frontend security practices, including authentication, authorization, secure data handling, and browser security considerations.

• Experience using AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity and quality.

What Success Looks Like

30 Days

• Develop a clear understanding of the frontend organization, teams, technical landscape, delivery priorities, and key stakeholders.

• Build trusted partnerships across Engineering, Product, Design, Platform, and Security.

• Assess team health, leadership capability, talent needs, delivery risks, and frontend engineering maturity.

• Deliver an initial meaningful frontend contribution, such as resolving a priority bug, production issue, or high-impact technical blocker.

60 Days

• Establish clear team operating rhythms, delivery accountability, performance expectations, and stakeholder communication.

• Align teams on frontend technical priorities, architecture standards, and quality expectations.

• Begin coaching engineers and emerging technical leaders while addressing high-impact delivery blockers, technical risks, and organizational gaps.

• Lead delivery of a scoped frontend feature, customer experience improvement, or engineering effectiveness initiative.

90 Days

• Drive predictable execution across frontend teams and strategic initiatives.

• Strengthen frontend architecture, engineering standards, shared capabilities, and developer experience.

• Improve team effectiveness through clear goals, feedback, talent development, and leadership growth, while establishing a roadmap that balances business priorities with long-term frontend health.

• Deliver an approved technical design and execution plan for a high-impact frontend initiative, with clear ownership, milestones, and measurable outcomes.

Ontic Benefits & Perks

• Competitive Salary

• Medical Benefits

• Internet Reimbursement

• Home Office Stipend

• Continued Education Stipend

• Festive & Achievement Celebrations

• Dynamic Office Environment

Ontic is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to a work environment that celebrates diversity. We do not discriminate against any individual based on race, color, sex, national origin, age, religion, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, military or veteran status, disability, or any factors protected by applicable law.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Ontic we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Ontic prioritizes the full inclusion of qualified individuals, providing necessary accommodations for those with disabilities to perform essential job functions. If you need assistance during the application or interview process or job tasks, please contact us at recruitment@ontic.co or call (512) 572-7400