Chief Application Developer - Frontend Architecture

ADP is hiring a Chief Application Developer - Frontend Architecture

• Are you empathetic to client needs and inspired by transformation and impacting the lives of millions of people every day?
• Are you looking to join a dynamic, inclusive team environment with a culture of collaboration and belonging?

Well, this may be the role for you. Ready to design what's next?

ADP Innovation Labs is seeking a Chief Application Developer to lead the design and development of next-generation experiences. This role is ideal for a senior technical leader who is passionate about building exceptional user experiences while maintaining deep expertise across the full application stack.

The ideal candidate combines strong frontend architecture and engineering skills with solid experience in backend services, API design, databases, and cloud-native application development. You will help define technical direction, establish engineering standards, mentor development teams, and remain hands-on in the codebase.

As a key member of the engineering organization, you will partner closely with Product, UX, Architects, and Engineering leaders to deliver highly scalable, secure, and intuitive solutions that improve the client experience and accelerate product innovation.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

Here's what you can expect on a typical day:

• Build teams that thrive. As an experienced leader, you want everyone to shine. You'll start each day by checking in with your engineering team to identify priorities and challenges. You'll find a way to make the team's day go smoother. You are constantly looking for ways to share your knowledge, motivate others and keep everyone engaged and productive.
• Build Products. You will use your technical expertise to review your team's work and help your people excel in an Agile environment. You're proactive and hands-on. When you see a potential issue, you never leave things hanging and unfinished. When you and your team deliver a finished product, it's as polished as you could make it.
• Variety of work. There is no typical day. You could be checking in with a team in India one minute, meeting with leadership to review initiatives for the coming quarter later and tomorrow handling a few ad hoc requests from your peers in other departments.
• Influence and inspire confidence. You are comfortable presenting to senior leaders, product owners, and peers with a compelling voice that you demonstrate through executive presence, leading change, and creating clear executive-level communications on milestone achievements.
• You have over 15 years of experience in relevant skills gained and developed in the same or similar role.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture, design, and development of modern software with a strong emphasis on user experience and performance.
• Collaborate with UX designers and product teams to translate customer needs into elegant, intuitive, and scalable solutions.
• Design and implement backend services, APIs, and integrations that support business-critical workflows.
• Define and evolve application, domain, and data architectures to ensure scalability, maintainability, and performance.
• Lead the design and optimization of database schemas, queries, and data access patterns.
• Conduct architecture reviews and provide technical leadership across multiple initiatives.
• Establish engineering standards, coding practices, testing strategies, and development processes.
• Mentor and coach engineers, fostering technical excellence and continuous learning.
• Partner with DevOps teams to improve CI/CD pipelines, observability, deployment automation, and operational excellence.
• Champion quality through automated testing, code reviews, and continuous improvement practices.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend solutions that align with business objectives and engineering strategy.
• Support production applications through troubleshooting, performance tuning, and root cause analysis

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated leadership of complex application development efforts.
• Expertise in modern frontend development technologies such as React, Angular, TypeScript, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS.
• Strong understanding of UX principles, responsive design, accessibility standards, and web performance optimization.
• Significant experience designing and developing RESTful APIs, GraphQL services, and distributed systems.
• Strong backend development experience with Node.js, C# .Net, Java, or similar enterprise technologies.
• Deep understanding of relational databases, data modeling, SQL optimization, and application performance tuning.
• Proven experience building highly available, secure, scalable, and maintainable enterprise applications.
• Strong understanding of software architecture patterns, domain-driven design, and modern application design principles.
• Experience with CI/CD tools and practices, including Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Docker, and containerized deployments.
• Expertise in test-driven development and automated quality practices.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams and organizations.

AI/ML Foundational Proficiencies:

• AI/LLM Exposure. Familiar with major AI platforms (OpenAI, Anthropic, others) and ability to leverage to enhance products and features.
• AI-Assisted Dev Tools. Proficient with coding tools (ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, Amazon Q, Cursor, etc).
• AI Best Practices. Effective prompt engineering, performance optimization, and secure data handling.

YOU'LL LOVE WORKING HERE BECAUSE YOU CAN:

• Have courageous team collaboration. Courage comes from how associates are willing to have difficult conversations, speak up, be an owner, and challenge one another's ideas to net out the best solution.
• Deliver at epic scale. We deliver real user outcomes using strong judgment and good instincts. We're obsessed with the art of achieving simplicity with a focus on client happiness and productivity.
• Be surrounded by curious learners. We align ourselves with other smart people in an environment where we grow and elevate one another to the next level. We encourage our associates to listen, stay agile, and learn from mistakes.
• Act like an owner - doer. Mission-driven and committed to leading change, you will be encouraged to take on any challenge and solve complex problems. No tasks are beneath or too great for us. We are hands-on and willing to master our craft.
• Give back to others. Always do the right thing for our clients and our community and humbly give back to the community where we live and work. Support our associates in times of need through ADP's Philanthropic Foundation.
• Join a company committed to equality and equity. Our goal is to impact lasting change through our actions.

What are you waiting for? Apply today!

Find out why people come to ADP and why they stay: https://youtu.be/ODb8lxBrxrY

(ADA version: https://youtu.be/IQjUCA8SOoA )