Principal Front-End Engineer, Design Systems

Hewlett Packard Enterprise•Ft. Collins, CO

1d•$147,000 - $279,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is hiring a Principal Front-End Engineer for its Design System team. The role is hybrid, with an average requirement of two days per week in an HPE office. The team translates HPE brand and experience standards into reusable assets and practical implementation guidance, connecting design intent, component behavior, accessibility, and development tools. Its work includes understanding product needs, reviewing contributions, and evolving shared architecture with attention to compatibility, reuse, documentation, and adoption. The engineer will provide technical leadership for shared UI architecture and foundations used across HPE products. The work combines hands-on engineering with architectural decision-making and collaboration across designers, engineers, accessibility specialists, and product teams. The role includes shaping accessible React and TypeScript components, APIs, design tokens, themes, documentation, testing, release practices, and developer tools, as well as mentoring contributors to the Grommet open-source community. The position also includes advancing AI-assisted design-system delivery. The engineer will help make approved components, tokens, guidance, metadata, and implementation patterns accessible to AI tools; evaluate AI-assisted workflows; document their results and limitations; and help establish automated checks and human-review practices for quality, accessibility, brand alignment, security, performance, and maintainability. Relevant background typically includes 10 or more years of professional experience, or an equivalent combination of practical experience and education. Relevant education may include a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, human-computer interaction, or a related field.

Requirements

Extensive professional experience building and maintaining production front-end systems with React, TypeScript, modern JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.
Significant experience with design systems, component libraries, shared platforms, or comparable reusable UI architecture serving multiple applications or teams.
Strong experience designing reusable components and APIs and working with design tokens, responsive behavior, and theming.
Experience collaborating with designers to translate design intent into production code.
Practical experience implementing accessible interfaces and evaluating them against WCAG 2.2 Level AA using automated and manual methods, including keyboard interaction, focus management, and screen reader testing.
Experience validating reusable UI components through automated component testing and visual regression testing.
Experience guiding release readiness and lifecycle decisions for reusable UI components, including versioning, backward compatibility, and migrations.
Experience contributing to package management and CI/CD workflows that support releases.
Demonstrated ability to independently lead significant, complex technical initiatives affecting multiple products or teams, from investigation through delivery and ongoing stewardship.
Ability to shape shared architecture, exercise sound judgment in technical trade-offs, collaborate with technical leads and partner teams, and demonstrate sustained outcomes.
Demonstrated experience communicating technical recommendations, influencing cross-functional decisions, documenting approaches, reviewing code, and mentoring or guiding other engineers.
Typically 10 or more years of professional experience, or an equivalent combination of practical experience and education.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Grommet or another mature open-source component library.
Experience with Storybook and component documentation.
Experience with Figma variables, design-to-code mappings, or Code Connect.
Experience with AI-assisted development workflows, structured component metadata, or MCP-based integrations.
Experience contributing to open-source projects and participating in library governance.
Experience with multi-theme architectures or automated design token pipelines.
Familiarity with component-library infrastructure, including monorepo tooling and build systems.
Familiarity with fundamental design principles, user-centered design, and design thinking methodologies.
Relevant education may include a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, software engineering, human-computer interaction, or a related field.

Responsibilities

Lead the technical approach to complex or ambiguous problems affecting multiple products, from investigation through release.
Evaluate trade-offs in user value, reuse, compatibility, accessibility, and maintenance, and resolve competing requirements with technical leads and partner teams.
Shape technical direction for accessible React and TypeScript components, reusable APIs, design tokens, themes, and shared UI foundations.
Build and evolve shared capabilities through hands-on engineering, keeping design assets, production code, documentation, and supported integrations aligned.
Assess requests and contributions for enterprise reuse and architectural fit, and recommend solutions that balance cross-product needs with a coherent shared system.
Establish acceptance criteria and guide contributors through review and remediation to meet accessibility, implementation, and maintainability expectations.
Lead quality outcomes for significant component initiatives through automated component testing, accessibility validation, and visual regression testing.
Lead release readiness and lifecycle practices, including dependency and security updates, package management, CI/CD, versioning, backward compatibility, and migration guidance.
Carry technical decisions through release and ongoing maintenance so shared capabilities remain supportable.
Create and improve documentation, examples, diagnostics, codemods, and developer tooling to reduce adoption effort and support consistent implementation.
Influence cross-product technical decisions by collaborating with designers, engineers, accessibility specialists, and product teams and clearly communicating trade-offs.
Mentor others and support Grommet open-source contributors in understanding, implementing, and maintaining agreed technical approaches.
Shape interfaces, integrations, and machine-readable Design System assets so AI tools can reliably access and use approved components, tokens, guidance, metadata, and implementation patterns.
Lead evaluations of AI-assisted workflows for significant initiatives, defining success criteria for design-to-code, prompt-to-code, documentation, accessibility evaluation, and remediation.
Conduct practical evaluations, document results and limitations, and recommend which AI-assisted improvements to adopt in team workflows.
Advance automated checks and human-review practices for AI-assisted delivery, validating component and API usage, accessibility, brand alignment, security, performance, and maintainability.