Senior Software Developer (frontend)

Description

Would you like to help shape the future of open infrastructure that serves as the backbone of global scholarly communication? Join us as our Senior Software Developer with a frontend focus.

• Location: Remote and global, to partially overlap with working hours in European time zones.
• Type: Full-Time, 40 hours a week, Mon-Fri.
• Remuneration: 90k USD equivalent. We pay salaries in the currency of the country in which you’re based. We arrive at the local USD-equivalent salary by determining the average 5-year USD exchange rate, to stabilise currency fluctuations.
• Benefits: Check out our Employee handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.
• Reports to: Program Technical Lead, Patrick Vale
• Timeline: Advertise in February-March and offer by April

About the role

We’re looking for a Senior Software Developer to join our Co-Creation and Community Trends (CCT) program to take on significant responsibility for complex, domain-heavy frontend systems and their long-term quality. This is a frontend-focused role, but not frontend-only: you’ll contribute to architectural decisions, work across application boundaries, and help carry work from problem definition through to delivery and iteration, within an established technical framework focussed on Typescript and Vue.js.

You’ll work on frontend systems that bring together structured metadata, APIs, and user-facing workflows used by Crossref’s diverse global membership. These systems are long-lived and complex, and need to remain usable, accessible, and reliable as they change and grow over time. Your work will focus on designing and maintaining applications that make this complexity understandable and usable, in close partnership with backend systems and data services.

Many of these systems are used directly by Crossref members and the wider research community, and decisions made in this role have a direct impact on how those services are experienced in practice. You’ll have autonomy in how you approach problems and implement solutions, alongside regular architectural collaboration and shared decision-making on longer-term direction, as part of a collaborative, mission-driven Technology Team reporting to the Program Technical Lead.

Key responsibilities

• Understand Crossref’s mission and how we support it with our services.
• Build accessible software that makes our metadata and services available to all.
• Design and implement complex frontend systems, contributing from problem definition through to delivery and iteration.
• Contribute to and document architectural decisions within the frontend and at system boundaries.
• Translate ambiguous product and domain requirements into robust, maintainable software, proposing options and trade-offs rather than waiting for fully specified solutions.
• Evolve frontend patterns and standards, including TypeScript usage, state management, testing strategy, and accessibility practices, in collaboration with other developers and technical leadership.
• Collaborate closely with backend developers and domain experts to ensure frontend architecture reflects real system constraints, data models, and operational realities.
• Review code and designs with a focus on long-term maintainability, accessibility, and developer experience.
• Increase team delivery velocity by unblocking others, sharing context, and raising the overall technical bar.
• Investigate and address issues in production, including bugs, performance problems, and opportunities for incremental improvement.

About you

You’re a software developer who enjoys understanding problems end-to-end and making thoughtful technical decisions. You’re comfortable working with ambiguity, you care deeply about users, and you take pride in building systems that last.

You don’t need close supervision, but you value collaboration, challenge assumptions constructively, and know when to bring others into technical decisions.

We know no-one will meet all the requirements, but we are looking for people who are willing to learn and like to meet new challenges - please apply if this feels like you!

Essential skills and experience:

• Minimum 5 years of hands-on experience in software development, engineering, or similar.
• Building software that works well for real users, including usability, accessibility, and clarity.
• Strong foundations in semantic HTML, CSS, and a practical understanding of modern, accessible UI construction.
• Working experience using TypeScript and JavaScript in production systems.
• Building and maintaining Vue.js applications over time.
• Writing effective tests, in Vitest, Testing Library, Playwright.
• Working with Continuous Integration and Delivery pipelines.
• Comfortable working with Git, including code reviews and collaborative workflows
• Experience working on long-lived production systems, balancing change, stability, and iteration.
• Experience designing frontend systems with an awareness of backend data stores and query patterns, and how frontend choices affect performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Comfortable being part of a geographically distributed team
• A self-directed working style, paired with strong communication skills and a collaborative approach to problem-solving.
• A preference for clear documentation and shared understanding.
• Curious and tenacious at learning new things and getting to the bottom of problems.
• Outstanding at interpersonal relations and relationship management.

Nice-to-have:

• Experience designing or consuming well-specified APIs.
• Experience with server-side rendering (SSR) or hybrid rendering approaches.
• Familiarity with systems that mix modern frontend frameworks with backend-rendered or legacy approaches.
• Experience working with schemas (JSON, XML, or similar structured formats).
• Familiarity with workflows, state machines, or complex form-driven systems.
• A strong interest in UX, including interaction design and usability.
• Building or maintaining dashboards or data-heavy interfaces.
• Experience with other programming languages (e.g. Python, Java, or similar).
• Familiarity with other frontend frameworks (e.g. React or Angular).
• Experience teaching, mentoring, or supporting other developers.
• Contributions to open source, whether through code, documentation, or community involvement.
• Familiarity with the scholarly communications domain.

About Crossref & the team

We’re a non-profit membership organisation that exists to make scholarly communications better. We rally the community; tag and share metadata; run an open infrastructure; play with technology; and make tools and services—all to help put research in context.

We envision a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organisations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society. We are working towards this vision of a ‘Research Nexus’ by demonstrating the value of richer and connected open metadata, incentivising people to meet best practices, while making it easier to do so. “We” means 23,000+ members from 160+ countries, 170+ million records, and nearly 2 billion monthly metadata queries from thousands of tools across the research ecosystem. We want to be a sustainable source of complete, open, and global scholarly metadata and relationships.

Take a look at our strategic agenda to see the planned work that aims to achieve the vision. The sustainability area aims to make transparent all the processes and procedures we follow to run the operation long-term, including our financials and our ongoing commitment to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI). The governance area describes our board and its role in community oversight.

It also takes a strong team – because reliable infrastructure needs committed people who contribute to and realise the vision, and thrive doing it. We are a distributed group of 50+ dedicated people who take our work seriously, but don’t take ourselves seriously - we like to play quizzes, measure coffee intake, and create 100s of custom slack emojis. We do this through fair policies and working practices, a balanced approach to resourcing, and accountability to each other.

We can offer the successful candidate a challenging and fun environment to work in. Together we are dedicated to our global mission and we are constantly adapting to ensure we get there. Take a look at our organisation chart, the latest Annual Meeting recordings, and our financial information.

Thinking of applying?

We especially encourage applications from people with backgrounds historically under-represented in research and scholarly communications. You can be based anywhere in the world where we can employ staff, either directly or through an employer of record.

We will invite selected candidates to an initial call to discuss the role. Following that, shortlisted candidates will be invited to work on a short (1-2 hours) take-home assignment. This will be followed by a technical interview. The last step will be a panel interview, where you will receive questions in advance. All interviews will be held remotely on Zoom.

Click here to apply!

Applications close on March 10th, 2026.

Anticipated salary for this role is 90k USD-equivalent, paid in local currency. Crossref offers competitive compensation, benefits, flexible work arrangements, professional development opportunities, and a supportive work environment. Check out our Employee Handbook for more details on paid time off, unlimited sick time, paid parental and medical leaves, and more.

Equal opportunities commitment

Crossref is committed to a policy of non-discrimination and equal opportunity for all employees and qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, pregnancy or a condition related to pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, uniform service member status, or any other protected class under applicable law. Crossref will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities in accordance with applicable law.

Thanks for your interest in joining Crossref. We are excited to hear from you!