Staff Front End Engineer

About the company

Zum is a student transportation technology company offering the Connected Mobility Experience (CMX) platform to manage school bus operations in real time.

About this role

About Zūm: Zūm is revolutionizing mass mobility with its Connected Mobility Experience (Zūm CMX™) system that connects and coordinates people, vehicles, and operations in real time. In the $50 billion student mobility market – the largest segment of the mass mobility industry – Zūm CMX  is transforming a daily source of anxiety and disruption into a reliable, transparent, and efficient mobility experience for students and families. Today, more than 6,500 schools rely on Zūm CMX. Recognized globally for its innovative approach and operational execution, Zūm has been named to Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Companies, CNBC Disruptor 50 and Changemakers, the World Economic Forum, and the Financial Times’ Fastest Growing Companies lists. Zūm is backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, GIC, TPG, and Softbank. This role is based at the Company’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, CA and requires you to be onsite 3x/week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday). We will only consider candidates already based in the Bay Area. Who You Are:  We're hiring our first HQ-based front end engineer who will lead front end technical direction for Zūm while staying hands-on as an individual contributor. This role operates as a technical lead; you'll set technical direction, make front end architecture decisions, and lead a team of engineers in Ukraine, while still writing code and shipping features yourself. You'll own the front end behind our dispatch, school, vendor, and maps portals — enterprise, data-dense tools that districts, transportation vendors, and internal operations teams rely on to run complex logistics. You'll work from HQ, in close collaboration with our local Product and Engineering teams. The Ukraine Front End team's hours overlap with HQ until roughly 11am PT, so this role doesn't require working offshore hours. What You'll Do: Own front end technical decisions and architecture across our Angular codebase, including patterns for state management and reactive UI (RxJS) Lead the Ukraine-based front end team technically: set direction, unblock hard problems, and raise the bar on craft, while still writing production code Work within an existing structure where PMs and backend teams drive most product and design direction, and Front End owns execution and technical quality Partner closely with PMs (who work in Figma with design) and backend engineering to turn direction into shipped, reliable front end systems Push the team's use of AI tooling forward, spotting where we're moving too slowly and driving the automation that changes that Bring technical leadership to infrastructure-level front end work, not only user-facing feature delivery Absorb the tech lead function currently split across two people and consolidate front end technical decision-making under one clear owner Set architectural standards for how our Angular apps handle state, data density, and reactive patterns across dispatch, school, vendor, and maps portals Identify where AI tooling could meaningfully speed up front end development and build the case (and the tooling) to get there Mentor and technically lead engineers on the Ukraine-based team, working within overlapping HQ hours rather than offshore shifts Build trust with PMs and backend leads so that front end execution stays fast and clean even as product direction comes from elsewhere What You Bring To Zūm: Senior+ or Staff-level front end engineering experience, with a track record of technical leadership, not just individual contribution Strong, hands-on experience with Angular; you should be able to step into our stack and start contributing quickly Experience with reactive UI patterns and RxJS or equivalent observables-based architecture Comfort building and owning enterprise, data-dense web applications, not consumer products or analytics dashboards Experience technically leading or mentoring other engineers, ideally across a distributed team Genuine interest in AI-driven automation, with real opinions on where a team could move faster Experience stepping into or consolidating a tech lead function previously shared across multiple people (preferred) Startup background (preferred; a plus, though not a strict requirement) Experience with mobile web, not native mobile, not React Native (preferred) Bonus Points: Domain experience in mobility, logistics, fleet, or other operationally complex enterprise software Experience with mapping or GPS-adjacent UI, relevant to our maps portal surface Experience collaborating closely with design in Figma-based workflows The targeted base salary range for this role is listed in the compensation section below. Actual salary may be above or below this range based on factors such as location, skills, and relevant experience. In addition, this position may include additional compensation in the form of equity or commissions. If you are a full-time salaried or hourly worker, we offer the following benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 401(k), Holidays, Wellness, Vacation, and more. The targeted pay range for this role in CA, USA is: $240,000 - $280,000 plus stock options.