Frontend Engineer (Data Visualisation & UX/UI)

We are looking for a proactive Front-End Engineer to join our R&D team in January/February 2026 and take ownership of the user experience and visual design of our data products. You will work closely with our product manager and data scientists to prototype, build, and refine interactive dashboards and user interfaces. Beyond day-to-day development, you will play a key role in defining and maintaining UX design patterns, company-wide design principles, and front-end best practices, ensuring a consistent and high-quality experience across all our products. You will have the chance to define the visual identity, design patterns, and UX standards of innovative data products. Working within a supportive, collaborative team culture focused on learning and development and opportunities to grow your skills across design, front-end engineering, and data visualisation, * Prototype and implement new user interfaces for internal and client-facing data products.

• Build, support, and enhance dashboards using Python, Dash, Plotly, and supplementary HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
• Lead the creation of a consistent visual language, UX design patterns, and company design principles.
• Collaborate with the project team to gather requirements and translate them into effective, user-friendly interfaces.
• Apply familiarity with the end-to-end design process (research, prototyping, iteration, feedback) to deliver polished products.
• Ensure dashboards and visualisations are both visually engaging and analytically clear.
• Contribute to continuous improvement by sharing design insights and front-end best practices with the team.

Do you have experience in JavaScript?, * Strong experience in front-end development with Python, Dash, Plotly, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Excellent visual and UX design instincts, particularly for data-heavy applications.
• Experience with or strong awareness of the UX design process and applying it in practice.
• Proactive approach to problem-solving.
• Detail-oriented with a focus on quality and polish.
• Comfortable working in a small, collaborative team environment.
• Strong communication skills to explain design and visualisation choices to non-technical colleagues and clients.

Desirable Skills

• Ability to wireframe and prototype interfaces using Figma or similar design tools.
• Familiarity with modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks such as React.
• Understanding of testing practices and frameworks to ensure code quality.
• Confidence with tooling and version control systems (e.g. Git).
• Strong knowledge of HTML5, CSS3, and modern styling approaches.
• Experience with mapping and geo-visualisation tools such as Mapbox GL, deck.gl, or Leaflet.
• Interest in data storytelling and making complex insights easy to understand.
• Appreciation for data analysis and how users interact with analytical workflows., * using Python, Dash and Plotly: 3 years (required)
• using UX design patterns, and company design principles. : 3 years (required)

• Enhanced maternity leave
• Enhanced paternity leave
• Health & wellbeing programme
• On-site parking
• Sick pay
• Store discount
• Transport links
• Work from home

As a rapidly growing software company, SME Water specialise in the use of contemporary analysis and data science techniques to deliver complex leakage and demand analysis insights within the UK water sector. SME Water's flagship product, Paradigm, is the largest demand analysis model in the UK, covering 60% of properties, with an expanding client list including United Utilities, Yorkshire Water and Anglian Water. Our people are at the heart of everything we do so we will invest in your learning and development so that you can become the best version of yourself with our career development plan. We also offer 33 days holiday (including bank holidays) enhanced sick, maternity and paternity pay, increased pension contributions and membership of Vitality Health to name but a few of our employee benefits. The interview process will consist of a short meeting over Teams and then a formal face to face interview which will include a technical exercise. Please note that your right to work in the UK will be verified before the Teams meeting and unfortunately as we do not hold a Visa Sponsorship licence cannot accept applicants who do not have this.