Front-End Engineer – React / Three.js

Job Title : Front-End Engineer – React / Three.js
Location : Hoboken,NJ ( Onsite )
Job Type : Contract- W2

Job Description :

• Build and own complex React Three Fiber features: interactive 3D equipment, a selection-driven action system, real-time visual effects, and the UI around them.
• Keep the app fast on low-end hardware — profile and tune the render loop, manage GPU/CPU cost, and hold a frame budget on Chromebook-class devices.
• Keep application state coherent as it grows (simulation state, equipment state, an event log used for assessment, and UI state) using Zustand.
• Make accessibility real: full keyboard operation, focus management, ARIA, and screen-reader support are core requirements here, not polish.
• Direct Claude Code effectively — decompose work into well-specified, agent-sized tasks, review the output with a senior eye, and know when to write something by hand instead.
• Help maintain the conventions, CLAUDE.md guidance, and repo structure that keep AI-generated code consistent and safe.
• Collaborate with our 3D technical artist to integrate assets and shaders cleanly.

Required skills and experience
Front-end engineering (the foundation — non-negotiable):

• Deep, senior-level React (React 19 / modern React): the render model, hooks discipline, memoization, effect timing, and a real feel for where re-renders and stale closures come from — which matter acutely in an app running a physics loop every frame.
• Three.js and React Three Fiber in production. Real command of the scene graph, geometry and materials, the useFrame render loop, and disposal / memory management (WebGL leaks are a real hazard). This is the heart of the role and the skill we weight most heavily — React experience without R3F is not a substitute.
• Real-time performance discipline. You think in frame budgets, know what drives GPU vs CPU cost, can profile a render loop, and habitually design for the weakest target device.
• State management at scale with Zustand (or clearly transferable experience), keeping a growing state model coherent rather than tangled.
• Accessibility as a first-class skill — keyboard navigation, focus management, ARIA, WCAG AA, screen-reader testing. For an education product this is a core requirement and a procurement gate, not an afterthought.
• TypeScript, testing, and modern tooling — TypeScript fluency, Vite, a real testing discipline (we favor testing real behavior over mocks), and the judgment to set the quality bar for others.

Working effectively with AI coding agents (the differentiator — evaluated seriously):

• You can decompose work into agent-sized units — scoping a task with enough context, clear boundaries, and defined done-conditions so an agent produces good work. You write specifications, not wishes.
• You review AI output critically — reading every diff with the skepticism you''d bring to a junior''s PR, catching the plausible-but-wrong, the convention drift, and the code that passes tests but violates an architectural rule. You never ship output you don''t fully understand.
• You know when not to use the agent — a feel for which tasks fit an agent well and which are faster or safer done by hand.
• You are comfortable with the operating environment around the agent: context management, CLAUDE.md / skills / MCP, and structuring a repo and its conventions so agents produce consistent results. (Multi-worktree / parallel-agent experience is a strong plus.)
• You have honest calibration about the tool — neither refusing it nor over-trusting it, with real intuition, from experience, about where it''s strong and where it approximates or fabricates.

Strongly preferred:

• WebGL / GLSL literacy — enough to collaborate with a technical artist and debug shader and asset integration.
• glTF / GLB loading and the asset pipeline.
• Prior educational, assessment, scientific, or simulation software experience.