Lingo.dev helps world-class dev teams use LLMs for app localization and content translation.

We’re growing!

Developers use our open-source i18n toolkit 2,500 times every week. Our CI integration creates automated pull requests with missing translations the moment code changes. Our localization compiler already makes React apps multilingual without rewriting existing code.

We're looking for a Staff Frontend Engineer – Compiler Engineering to build the next-generation Lingo.dev Compiler – an npm package and CLI that localizes massive React/Next.js codebases in O(1) time, without Translate / wrappers and without key-extraction sweeps, delivering truly zero-friction i18n.

Our ideal Staff Frontend Engineer:

• Crafts Babel / unplugin transforms that add < 50 ms to total build time and slot effortlessly into Next.js, Vite, Remix and whatever ships tomorrow
• Processes ASTs for 10 M+ lines while keeping memory and DX in check
• Shapes Webpack, Rspack and Rollup configs that “just work” across CI and monorepos
• Designs CLI UX that takes devs from npx lingo.dev init to a translated build in under three minutes
• Explores SWC, WASM and turbopack – picking the right hammer or forging a new one
• Leverages core Web-platform APIs like Intl with the curiosity of a language geek
• Prompts AI coding tools with taste and intuition – achieving 25–50× throughput while keeping craftsmanship intact
• Guides backend, design-engineering and content peers through compiler internals, welcoming every tough code review
• Learns fast, owns mistakes and adapts at startup speed
• Obsesses over onboarding friction – if a user stalls, you treat it as a P0 bug

You'll design transforms that parse, rewrite and emit code developers can’t distinguish from their own. You'll invent heuristics that infer i18n keys automatically and benchmark cold and incremental builds until the numbers read “imperceptible.”

Our toolchain today: Babel, unplugin (Rollup/Vite/Webpack), TypeScript, Node.js – and we’re eager to experiment with SWC, Rspack and WASM or any frontier that makes the compiler faster. If the right answer is Rust, Go or Zig, we’ll back you.

Design thinking, intuition and taste

AI now handles the mechanical side of code transformation. Claude-4, O-3, Cursor, Devin – they spit out passable Babel plugins in seconds.

What remains invaluable? Intuition and taste – shaped by solving hard problems, learning what actually works, and, in moments of uncertainty, making the right call when there’s no clear answer. That kind of judgment is forged through architecting compiler pipelines that rewrite millions of lines without breaking a single build, designing AST passes that stay O(1) as projects scale, and refining AI-generated transforms into production-ready code developers can trust.

We don’t want you to join us because you can code. We want you to join us because you feel what is good, elegant and beautiful – because you see what others don’t. And because you’re a great person to work with.

We're a deeply technical team, backed by the same investors who backed Stripe, Airbnb and Coinbase. Plus founders of Supabase and Dependabot. And all of them want us to build devtools developers want.

We hire globally, work remotely, and meet regularly as a team in new locations around the world.

If you're looking for a space to do your 120 % best – send us your CV and the most unusual build-tool work you’re proud of!

Interview Process

• 30 min coffee chat
• 2-3 h paid take-home
• 30 min technical dive-in