Over 650 Frontend developers (AKA FED) across 6+ countries make up our frontend engineering guild - the professional community that provides guidance, standardization, peer-learning, and growth opportunities to the people behind our client-facing technologies.
We asked our guild managers to talk to us about the different challenges our engineers are currently working on solving, their growth, and the role of the guild.
First, what are the different groups within the FED guild?
Not all Frontend developers at Wix do the same type of work. Typically, they belong to one of the following groups:
Business units - developers who are focusing on one of our 40+ business verticals and products. These developers work on the business logic of those solutions - for example, for our ecommerce users; photographers using our platform; our professional users (Partners, agencies & developers); etc. Each business unit caters to a unique audience with unique engineering challenges and requires a different specific expertise.
Platform teams - developers in these teams work on a platform product (which answers multiple business needs), by hosting or serving more than one application. Applications can be fixed or dynamic, and contribute from within or outside of the Wix ecosystem. We have the Viewer platform, Editor platform, Business Manager platform, eCommerce platform, and more.
Infra teams - teams in charge of developing and maintaining the core tools, frontend infrastructure, and common libraries which are there to accelerate our development process, ensure high standards and common ways of working among the guild. Infra teams are relevant and in close touch with both Business units and Platform teams.
What are some of the engineering challenges a frontend developer at Wix is solving?
FEDs at Wix are responsible for building extraordinary, scalable and resilient client-facing technologies that empower millions of people and businesses around the world to be successful online.
Our huge scale demands we keep up with super high standards of performance, accessibility, SEO and extensibility. You’d be surprised to find out the resolutions we go into to be flexible while still easy to use.
We also need to integrate with other teams very often. For these integrations to be successful our projects require super documentation, clear APIs, testing coverage and ease of use.
What makes Wix different for FEDs?
First, we get to build the future of the web, and this mission is extremely exciting. The micro-frontends we develop support over 40 product lines and dozens of robust infrastructure tools and components.
The scale we work at means that every new feature we deliver meets hundreds of thousands of users within hours - and we have a lot of those new features. In fact, we have more than 500 GA’s a day, which means a production change every 60 seconds(!).
Developers at Wix take part in the entire development cycle, from product definition to testing, releasing, and monitoring. We take a feature end-to-end, from the initial discussion with Product until it reaches millions of our users. We make sure every commit is production-ready, tested, monitored, and doesn’t degrade performance.
We have multiple internal tools that we built to support our FED velocity and quality. For example, we developed our own design system and tools for CI/CD, testing, monitoring, rule enforcement, and building APIs; We use a wide range of tech stacks and technologies, including Typescript, React, and NodeJS; And finally, we’re part of a community. We get to work with amazing peers and learn from each other.
What are some common guild activities?
Webinars - every week we meet to learn from other community members. We share updates about projects and new technologies we develop inside the company, and occasionally host top industry leaders for talks tailored especially for us.
Guild weeks - we encourage our people to change the atmosphere several times a year by taking a week or 2 to join another team/bring their idea to life/get to work with technologies you don’t use in your day-to-day.
Courses - we offer special courses FEDs can join to expand their knowledge, acquire new skills, master web development and make new friends and connections in the process.
Workshops - this is where we practice skills in software and web applications development. We also have enrichment workshops to acquire new skills, like how to build your own mechanical keyboard or write a great blog post.
Wix Hackathons - our guild has been the leading participant in Wix hackathons, joining together to build innovative projects beyond your wildest dreams!
What does growth look like at Wix’s Frontend Engineering guild?
We encourage (and expect!) you to grow, whether it’s as an individual contributor or as a manager.
To start, you’ll be growing professionally by being part of the guild and its super high standards, working at scale, and solving edge case challenges.
On an ongoing basis, the guild is a platform for growth through its activities, courses, and mentorship programs. You’ll also be given the time and training to work on your personal brand, with the help of the guild and Wix Academy.
Career advancements come in many forms: becoming team leads (last year over 90% of all new managers in R&D were people who were promoted from within our teams!), tech leads, architects, and guild masters.
As your Wix journey progresses, you’ll also be able to move to different products and technologies through internal mobility, which is encouraged and welcomed at Wix.
To explore all Frontend guild roles at Wix, click here.
