Front-end/Web Architect

Front-end/Web Architect
As digital transformation reshapes daily work, organisations need dependable technology partners. BIT offers a structure with defined responsibilities to support the efficiency and effectiveness of IT activities and provide consistent business services while fostering a workplace where staff contributions are acknowledged and valued.
At the European Patent Office (EPO), we are undergoing a major transformation to build a DevOps practice, embed agile principles, adopt green technologies and use artificial intelligence. Our mission is to support innovation, competitiveness and economic growth across Europe. We take innovation seriously and are fully committed to our digital transformation.
The EPO's Strategic PlanSP2028) reinforces our commitment to sustainability by engaging and empowering our workforce through modern HR practices. The strategy focuses on attracting and developing talent, supporting mobility and flexibility, providing engaging workspaces and ensuring the EPO remains a leading institution in the intellectual property field.
We are seeking highly motivated and experienced experts who can work independently and bring state‑of‑the‑art knowledge to our Engineering and Architecture team. The front‑end/web architect role combines strategic technological vision with hands‑on implementation in the front-end and web domain. You should be fully at home in a cloud‑native environment and able to leverage cloud platforms to advance the front-end domain. Sharing knowledge, learning new technologies and contributing to our ongoing transformation are essential to this role.
In anticipation of exciting future opportunities in different fields of IT across our organisation, we are launching a search for front-end/web architects.

With us you will

• shape the future of our front-end architecture by designing reference architectures, patterns and reusable implementations that will be adopted across the entire organisation
• act as the strategic technical leader for front-end/web technologies, identifying emerging tools, frameworks and approaches that accelerate delivery of SP2028 goals
• drive high-impact initiatives: collaborate with senior IT leadership, build proofs of concept, document reference architectures and work hands-on inside product teams to land these solutions in production
• be the guardian of technical excellence, ensuring product teams adopt best practices, modern standards and the EPO design system consistently and successfully
• provide expert, hands-on troubleshooting for complex performance, compatibility or architectural issues, when needed
• serve as the go-to technical authority on everything front end: performance engineering, security, library/framework decisions, CI/CD pipelines, progressive delivery, observability, browser support, UI/UX implementation, design-system governance and cloud-native patterns (OIDC, etc.)
• mentor and coach teams, conduct technical interviews and help raise the overall front-end skill level across the EPO
• be sent on temporary secondments to product teams when strategic or groundbreaking projects require your deep expertise

Apply if you have

• state-of-the-art expertise in modern web engineering and architecture
• five or more years of technical leadership guiding development teams
• extensive end-to-end experience leading customer-facing (or large-scale internal) projects: migrations, greenfield builds and production roll‑outs
• full project life-cycle ownership, from initial architecture through long-term maintenance
• outstanding communication and presentation skills with an ability to explain complex technical topics clearly to engineers and senior stakeholders alike
• proven technical coaching, mentoring and analytical problem-solving under pressure
• strong ability to work independently across multiple strategic initiatives
• deep, current hands-on (production-level) expertise in:
• React and TypeScript (five or more years)
• modern build tooling (Vite, Webpack, Redux Ecosystem, etc.)
• advanced CSS/HTML, layout techniques and performance optimisation
• progressive delivery patterns (feature flags, canary releases)
• Front-end observability and OpenTelemetry (OTel)
• cloud-native front-end security (OIDC, token flows, CSP, etc.)
• Additional nice-to-haves:
• cross-browser/device compatibility at scale
• Web Vitals and performance engineering
• designing and evolving large-scale corporate design systems
• public cloud platforms and modern CI/CD practices

Our minimum requirements for this post

• Diploma of completed studies at master's level or – in exceptional cases – equivalent professional experience
• Generally, an excellent knowledge (at least C1) of one official language (English, French and German) and ability to understand the other two; alternatively, excellent knowledge (at least C1) of at least one official language (in such cases, the willingness to learn the missing language(s) and to reach level B2 within a set time frame would be required)
• Citizenship of one of the member states of the European Patent Organisation

Process

Candidates are kindly asked to upload an updated CV and outline their motivation in the designated application field (character limit 4000). If so wished, the motivation letter can also be uploaded as a Word or pdf attachment under "Application document" in SuccessFactors. In this case, please indicate in the designated field "Please refer to attached motivation letter".
The successful candidate will be selected on the basis of qualifications, competencies, professional experience and language knowledge, supplemented as appropriate by interviews, tests and/or a personality questionnaire.
A reserve list may be constituted, should more candidates than required at this time be considered suitable following the selection procedure. Such reserve lists are valid for 18 months and reserve list candidates may be contacted, should a vacancy with substantially the same profile arise during that period.

Key information

• Job group: 4

Grade: G7 to G10 (net (basic) monthly salary* for this vacancy: EURto, depending on experience and location)
Duration of appointment: Five years, with the possibility of extension
Career path: Technical

Location: Office-wide

Application deadline: 15 April 2026
Interviews planned for: first half of May 2026

• after deduction of EPO-internal tax and before deduction of staff contributions to the social security and pension schemes

We welcome all applications for vacant positions. We consider each on its professional merits – regardless of your nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, parental responsibilities, age, religion or belief.