About this Senior Web Developer role at AKQA

AKQA · Onsite · Berlin

At AKQA (part of WPP), we believe in the imaginative application of art and science to create beautiful ideas, products, and services. With an entrepreneurial and collaborative approach, we design adaptive digital experiences that capture the imagination and deliver meaningful impact for our clients.
Our Technology teams operate at the intersection of creativity and engineering, building innovative platforms for some of the world’s most iconic brands. We combine technical excellence with experimentation and craft, delivering scalable, future-facing solutions in close collaboration with Creative, Strategy, and Delivery.

As a Senior Frontend Developer, you will play a key role in building modern, composable digital platforms. You will work hands-on with cutting-edge technologies and collaborate across disciplines to deliver high-impact, scalable experiences for global clients.

Your role will be hands-on but also inspiring others to form an exemplary technical team. You will work closely with others to ensure good collaboration across all disciplines and to facilitate the solving of day-to-day challenges. As such, we are looking for a skilled Senior Web Developer who is not only a collaborative leader and proactive problem-solver but also embodies a comprehensive technical mastery honed over 6+ years of frontend or full-stack development in agency, product, or enterprise-scale environments, demonstrating a proven track record of delivering scalable digital products.

ROLE REQUIREMENTS

Build and maintain scalable frontend applications using Next.js (v15) and modern React patterns.
Work within a composable architecture, seamlessly integrating CMS (e.g., Contentful), commerce (e.g., commercetools), and various APIs.
Contribute to and evolve a Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) layer, often within Next.js.
Translate creative concepts into performant, accessible (WCAG), and production-ready experiences.
Develop component-driven UIs aligned with design systems (e.g., Storybook, design tokens).
Collaborate effectively with design, backend, and product teams across international AKQA studios.
Optimize applications for exceptional performance, SEO, accessibility, and scalability.
Contribute to architectural discussions and support the implementation of scalable frontend patterns.
Prototype and implement AI-powered features, including search, personalization, and conversational UI.
Mentor junior developers and actively contribute to engineering best practices and knowledge sharing.

QUALITIES & CHARACTERISTICS

Exceptional Frontend Engineering Prowess: You possess deep proficiency across the core frontend stack:
Languages & Styling: HTML5, CSS3 (including modern styling like TailwindCSS), JavaScript (ES6+), and TypeScript.
Frameworks & Architecture: Hands-on experience with ReactJS and Next.js (App Router, SSR, SSG, edge rendering), excelling in building component-driven architectures and reusable UI systems.
Quality & Performance: You ensure optimal performance, accessibility (WCAG), and SEO, leveraging familiarity with Storybook and design system workflows.
Strategic Composable Architecture & Platform Thinking: You have proven experience working with headless CMS (e.g., Contentful), composable commerce setups (e.g., commercetools), and API-driven architectures. You understand BFF patterns, API orchestration, and can skillfully integrate distributed systems.
Forward-Thinking AI & Emerging Technologies Integration: You have a practical interest or experience in integrating AI capabilities into frontend applications, understanding RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) patterns and how frontend systems interact with LLM-powered services. You have exposure to AI-driven search, personalization, or conversational interfaces and can prototype such features with awareness of performance, privacy, and UX implications.
Proficiency in AI-Assisted Development & Tooling: You are skillful in using modern AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate workflows including code generation, refactoring, debugging, and documentation, always maintaining high code quality, security, and maintainability. You are curious to explore and adopt emerging developer tooling that enhances team efficiency and delivery speed.
Robust Backend & Integration Acumen: You possess working knowledge of Node.js and API integration, including collaborating on API contracts and data models, and a clear understanding of how the frontend integrates with various search platforms, CMS, and backend services.
Excellence in Build, Deployment & Quality: You exhibit experience with modern build tools (Webpack, Vite, Turbopack) and a familiarity with deployment platforms (Vercel, AWS, Cloudflare), coupled with an unwavering focus on code quality, testing, and production readiness.
Strong Collaboration & Communication Skills: You are able to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. You thrive in cross-functional, design-led environments, are proactive, solution-oriented, possess strong attention to detail, and are comfortable working across distributed international teams.
Leadership & Mentorship Mindset: You are passionate about doing what’s right for our clients, understanding their business goals, and effectively able to teach, coach, and mentor other team members, contributing to engineering best practices and knowledge sharing.
Adaptive & Agile Approach: You are a self-starting technologist who can draw parallels across a technology landscape, aren’t restricted by a specific skillset, and understand Lean and Agile methodologies to optimize team efficiency, identifying and resolving bottlenecks.

Familiarity with search platforms (Algolia, Coveo), exposure to enterprise CMS ecosystems (AEM), experience with edge computing and CDN strategies, or analytics/experimentation platforms would be an added advantage.

Explore our extensive range of benefits here.

We believe great work happens when we're together, fostering creativity, collaboration, and connection. That's why we’ve adopted a hybrid approach including required in-office days. If you require accommodations or flexibility, please discuss this with the hiring team during the interview process.

AKQA is an equal opportunity employer and considers applicants for all positions without discrimination or regard to particular characteristics. We are committed to fostering a culture of respect in which everyone feels they belong and has the same opportunities to progress in their careers.

About WPP

WPP is the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands. We unite cutting-edge media intelligence and data solutions, world-class creativity, next-generation production, transformative enterprise solutions and expert strategic counsel in a single company – powered by exceptional talent and our agentic marketing platform, WPP Open, to help our clients navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver transformational growth. For more information, visit WPP.com.

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About AKQA

CORE VALUES

Our founding values guide our work and the philosophy of our firm:

Innovation – pioneering ideas combined with the application of technology, to achieve lasting improvements in performance for our clients.

Service – outstanding service to our clients and colleagues, so we retain exceptional people and create trust-based relationships with clients.

Quality – adhere to the highest professional standards and superior quality.

Thought – recommending the best solutions through the most rigorous thinking process.

TEAMWORK

AKQA provides the highest quality ideas and innovation services to clients around the world. Our consistent track-record of results achieved for clients have set our firm apart. Through our focus on our core values, thought-leadership, rigorous delivery, and industry initiatives, AKQA is today one of the world’s most influential companies. Our goal is to become a high-performance environment where the most talented people flourish. With our perfectionist approach, people join AKQA for the opportunity to do the best work of their careers.

We create digital products, services and immersive experiences that are useful, usable, delightful and enjoyed by millions. We employ a rapid ideation and prototyping process that focuses on getting pilots into market quickly, helping clients make a sustained impact, increase their relevance and expand their connection. By embracing a pioneering approach that continues to lead and define the industry, we deliver cohesive blueprints that fulfil audience needs and surpass business goals.

LONG-TERM COMMITMENT

AKQA is committed to helping our team develop into the best possible practitioners and to providing them with an unparalleled foundation for their career. We help develop well-rounded professionals acquire leadership skills more quickly than at other organisations. Our employees benefit from the trusted long-term nature of our client relationships as well as the cultural alignment between the client and our own organisation, creating an optimum environment to deliver the work without any compromises.

ORGANISED TO SUCCEED

The core motivation at AKQA is product excellence. Although we are part of WPP, AKQA operates as an independent firm. Organically grown, our team works as a single firm, without geographic division. This means we can bring the best resources from our network to provide solutions for our clients.

In addition to our own Future Lions initiative, we have formed partnerships with many of the world’s leading universities so we can hire their best graduates. We combine youth and energy with maturity and experience to form a community that has a unique diversity of knowledge and exceptional professional judgement.

DEVELOPMENT

In addition to on-the-job training, AKQA offers a menu of training through the AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development. This comprehensive curriculum of formal training is designed to equip our team with the substantive creative, engineering, business acumen, communications, management and analytical skills required to have professionally rewarding careers. AKQA Academy and WPP Professional Development courses are taught by leaders in their fields including AKQA’s own senior team and respected external experts.

To maintain the continuous focus on our core values, and provide a clear career path for our team, all of our Managing Directors and Executive Partners are promoted from within AKQA.

All AKQA employees and clients are invited to participate in the AKQA Insight and AKQA Tech.Insight thought leadership programmes. These comprise a series of informative lectures and Q&A sessions with authors, artists, athletes, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs who are recognised leaders in their respective disciplines.

DIVERSITY

We believe that diversity is vital to AKQA’s ability to provide our clients with the best recommendations and are committed to fostering a varied and inclusive work environment. We provide our employees with the canvas, tools and confidence to help them advance their careers in a way that best suits them.

SUSTAINABILITY

At AKQA we believe everything a company does should be about taking the responsibility to be respectful towards the community and the environment. We consider community and pro-bono work to be an important commitment of our employees. We encourage our team to devote their skills to a broad range of pro-bono and community activities, working with myriad charitable and not-for-profit organisations. AKQA is part of WPP’s Sustainability initiatives. WPP is ranked no. 49 in an annual round-up of the World’s Greenest Companies.

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