Join Oak Engage – Where Communication Meets Connection

At Oak Engage, we’re on an exciting growth journey - backed by a major investment from NorthEdge - to scale our impact and redefine the future of employee engagement. Trusted by some of the UK’s biggest brands, including Aldi, Five Guys, and ITV, we help organisations connect, engage, and empower their people through smarter, more personalised internal communication.

With our next stage of expansion underway, we’re building a team of bold, ambitious thinkers ready to make their mark at a high-growth, purpose-driven SaaS company. If you’re looking to shape the future of work and grow alongside a company that’s going places, now’s the time to join Oak.

About the Role

We’re looking for a Principal Front-End Engineer with strong React experience to lead the development of user-facing features across Oak’s platform. You’ll play a pivotal role in setting the technical direction for the front end of our platform, working closely with cross functional teams to deliver elegant, performant, and scalable user experiences.

As both a hands-on engineer and technical leader, you’ll be someone who owns front-end architecture decisions, mentors developers, and champions engineering excellence; helping us scale a modern, maintainable, and accessible front-end ecosystem.

What You’ll Do

• Define and evolve our front-end architecture and technical direction, ensuring it aligns with business and product goals
• Lead the development of high-quality, accessible and performant UI components using React, TypeScript, and other JavaScript frameworks
• Collaborate closely with designers, product managers, and backend engineers to shape seamless user experiences across our platform
• Lead by example and uphold standards for code quality, accessibility, testing, and performance across the front-end stack
• Mentor and support front-end engineers of varying experience levels, sharing knowledge, fostering growth and driving continuous improvement.
• Influence and contribute to company-wide engineering culture, processes, and technical strategy
• Drive continuous improvement across tooling, workflows, and development practices
• Contribute to front-end architectural planning and long-term technical strategy as the front end subject matter expert.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of experience in front-end development, including significant exposure to React and Typescript
• Strong communication and leadership skills, with a coaching mindset and a commitment to team development
• Deep understanding of modern HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and experience integrating with RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs
• Experience designing and evolving scalable front-end systems in a SaaS or product-led environment
• Strong architectural thinking, cross functional collaboration skills and experience with scalable component-based systems
• Familiarity with agile methodologies, Git, CI/CD, and DevOps practices - exposure to Azure DevOps is a plus
• A user-focused mindset with attention to detail and performance
• A strategic thinker who can balance short-term delivery with long-term scalability and maintainability

Benefits

Why Join Oak?

• A high impact role in a mission-led SaaS company with strong growth and product-market fit
• The chance to work with household brands and solve real-world enterprise challenges
• Flexible hybrid or remote working options
• Private health insurance, life insurance, and Employee Assistance Programme (EAP)
• Gym contribution and travel allowance
• Enhanced maternity, paternity, and discretionary leave
• Generous holiday policy (25 days + Bank Holidays + additional discretionary days)
• Regular team socials and a positive, collaborative culture

Our Recruitment Process

Hiring Manager Interview

• Deep dive into architecture, problem-solving, and team contributions
• Assess communication and curiosity

Technical Task or Live Pairing

• Realistic, time-bound task or live coding session
• Use structured rubric for fairness (avoid freeform “whiteboarding”)
• "Focus on team collaboration, code quality, and feedback"

Peer Technical Panel/Culture Fit / CTO Chat - In person at our NCL HQ

• Includes cross-functional devs, product manager or designer
• Assess long-term growth potential and alignment with tech principles
• Opportunity for candidate to ask strategic questions

Equality & Diversity at Oak

At Oak, we’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome, supported, and able to thrive.

We believe that different perspectives make us stronger, and we actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities — including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status.

We are an equal opportunities employer. All hiring decisions are based on business needs, role requirements, and individual qualifications — without bias or discrimination.

If you require any adjustments to the interview process or the role itself to support accessibility, please let us know — we’re happy to help.