Senior Front End Engineer

Department: Software Development

Location: Vancouver, Canada

Compensation: CA$151K – CA$208K • Offers Equity

Employment Type: FullTime

About Us

Spare is a fast-growing, successful startup. We thrive on innovation, rapid execution, and delivering top-tier products that make a real impact in the transit industry.

About the team

The AI Platform team sits at the center of Spare’s product. We own the shared services every Spare product depends on, along with Nutshell, Spare’s design system. The systems we support serve millions of AI voice calls every year and help tens of thousands of people get where they need to go.

The user interfaces we build are used heavily by transit agencies around the world: dispatchers watching live vehicles, planners modelling a season of service, schedulers building driver shifts for the month ahead. Dense screens, long shifts, and real consequences when something is hard to use.

You’d be joining a cross-functional team of developers, a product manager, and designers, doing customer-facing work with real human impact.

About the role

The way software gets built is changing. Developers at Spare aren’t waiting on someone else’s spec. They’re talking to customers, making design decisions, and owning problems from discovery through a shipped solution. AI has dramatically expanded what a single developer can deliver, and this team leans into that.

As a Senior Frontend Engineer, you’d turn the Design team’s direction into the product people actually use. You’d own the technical calls that keep our interfaces accessible, fast, and organised in the code, so other engineers and our AI workflows can build on them with the right guardrails.

The other development teams are your customers too. You’ll clean up the interfaces we already have, lay the UI foundations for emerging products, and take people with you as they build on top.

Hybrid. Downtown Vancouver, three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday).

What you’ll do

• Own and extend Nutshell: tokens, shared components, and the patterns every other team builds with

• Refactor the existing frontend where necessary, creating a highly organised environment and setting the UI foundations for emerging products

• Shape the system so engineers and AI agents produce accessible, consistent UI by default

• Fill in the gaps that don’t get explicitly designed: empty states, keyboard behaviour, screens under real operational load

• Enable the people who build on your work: documentation, feedback, and the occasional workshop to drive adoption

What you’ll bring

• A track record of data-dense interfaces. Complex operational UI, not just marketing sites

• Deep knowledge of our frameworks. React, TypeScript, modern CSS, and component API design

• Experience getting a design system adopted. A component library other engineers depend on, and the buy-in to get it used

• The ability to work across the stack. You can carry a feature past the frontend, but the interface stays your specialty

• Curiosity about AI-assisted development. You don’t need to be an expert today, but you’re already experimenting and can explain the decisions in the code you ship

• Clear communication. Comfortable with design and product, and able to write the doc people actually read

• A high bar and real ownership. Ambitious standards, proactive communication, and the drive to move without waiting for direction

Depth of experience matters more than a year count. People who thrive here typically have 5+ years.

Nice to have

• Experience in transit, mobility, or logistics

• Experience at a high-growth startup at a similar stage

• Comfort working in design tooling, shoulder to shoulder with designers

• Experience coaching other engineers without a formal title

Don't meet every single requirement?

Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification in the job posting.

At Spare, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment so we strongly encourage you to apply even if you don't believe you meet every single qualification outlined. We also do our best to respond to all applications we receive.

Why Join Us?

• Work on challenging technical problems with real-world impact in the transportation industry

• A fast-paced, high-impact role in a rapidly growing startup

• The opportunity to take ownership of core systems and drive innovation

• A dynamic, collaborative, and supportive team culture

• Competitive salary and equity options

If you are ready to tackle complex routing and optimization challenges and thrive in a high-performance environment, we'd love to hear from you!