job summary
Our West Michigan Client is looking for a Sr Front End Developer with experience in IBM's Carbon Design System. This can be a remote role working EST hours.
location: Telecommute
job type: Contract
salary: $45 - 57 per hour
work hours: 8am to 5pm
education: Bachelors
responsibilities
We are seeking a Senior Contract Front-End Developer to complete the technical implementation of an internal design system based on IBM's open-source Carbon Design System. The design system is being customized to reflect our visual identity and support new internal web and mobile application work.
This is a defined contractor engagement focused on evaluating Carbon's available open-source implementation, creating a maintainable styling and theming layer, placing the necessary code in an approved Meijer repository, and providing stand-alone technical guidance for future adopters and contributors. The engagement does not include rebuilding or remediating existing internal applications.
The ideal contractor has 5 to 10 years of relevant front-end development experience, including direct experience building, extending, or maintaining a production design system or reusable component library.
Project Scope and Deliverables
- Assess Carbon's open-source implementation and recommend an appropriate technical approach.
- Translate approved Figma variables and tokens into a maintainable Meijer styling or theming layer.
- Establish a repeatable method for teams to use Carbon components with Meijer styles.
- Implement the agreed component scope, with focused attention on the Data Table and approximately three to five custom components.
- Preserve accessibility, performance, and maintainability throughout the implementation.
- Store and organize the code in an approved Meijer repository with an appropriate approach for consumption, versioning, testing, and updates.
- Create stand-alone Getting Started / How to Use documentation, implementation examples, and contribution guidance.
- Validate the approach with representative developers and transfer the knowledge needed to use and extend the system after the engagement concludes.
Required Experience and Skills
- 5 to 10 years of relevant front-end development experience.
- Demonstrated experience building, extending, or maintaining a production design system or reusable component library.
- Strong proficiency with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or TypeScript.
- Strong understanding of modern CSS architecture, including custom properties, tokens, themes, responsive behavior, component states, and maintainable styling strategies.
- Experience consuming, adapting, or extending an open-source component library.
- Experience implementing design tokens across design and development environments.
- Experience with React, component-based front-end development, and modern build and package-management practices.
- Experience creating reusable technical assets that can be adopted across multiple products or teams.
- Strong knowledge of web accessibility and experience implementing accessible interactive components.
- Experience with appropriate component, accessibility, and front-end quality testing practices.
- Experience establishing or maintaining source repositories for shared technical assets.
- Experience writing stand-alone technical documentation for developers.
- Ability to assess an existing implementation and recommend a practical, maintainable architecture.
- Ability to translate Figma specifications, variables, tokens, component states, and interaction intent into code.
- Strong attention to code quality, organization, performance, maintainability, and clear technical communication.
Preferred Experience
- Direct experience with IBM's Carbon Design System.
- Experience theming Carbon or a comparable open-source design system.
- Experience supporting design-system adoption across teams using multiple development frameworks.
- Experience with enterprise or internal operational applications.
- Experience implementing complex data-heavy components, particularly Data Tables.
- Experience with component documentation environments such as Storybook.
- Experience distributing shared styles or components through internal packages.
- Experience with visual regression testing.
- Experience defining contribution, release, versioning, or deprecation practices for a shared component library.
- Experience working within a distributed or federated contribution model.
qualifications
5+ years of relevant front-end development experience including experience building, extending, or maintaining a production design system or reusable component library.
HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or TypeScript.
Strong understanding of modern CSS architecture, including custom properties, tokens, themes, responsive behavior, component states, and maintainable styling strategies.
React, component-based front-end development, and modern build and package-management practices.
Reusable technical assets that can be adopted across multiple products or teams.
web accessibility and experience implementing accessible interactive components.
writing stand-alone technical documentation for developers.
Ability to assess an existing implementation and recommend a practical, maintainable architecture.
Ability to translate Figma specifications, variables, tokens, component states, and interaction intent into code.
Preferred Experience
Direct experience with IBM's Carbon Design System.
Experience theming Carbon or a comparable open-source design system.
Experience supporting design-system adoption across teams using multiple development frameworks.
Experience with enterprise or internal operational applications.
Experience implementing complex data-heavy components, particularly Data Tables.
Experience with component documentation environments such as Storybook.
Experience distributing shared styles or components through internal packages.
Experience with visual regression testing.
Experience defining contribution, release, versioning, or deprecation practices for a shared component library.
Experience working within a distributed or federated contribution model.
skills
Figma
Front-End
front-end development
IBM's
versioning
component library
mobile application
open-source
Design System
production design
technical implementation