What to assess in a frontend engineer
Framework knowledge is the easy part to test and the easy part for an assistant to fill in. The harder skills are the ones that decide whether a feature works for every user on every device.
- UI architecture: structuring a feature into components, state and data so the next change is cheap.
- Accessibility: semantic HTML, labels, focus order, keyboard use and screen-reader announcements.
- Performance: what makes a page slow to load or slow to respond, and how to measure it.
- CSS and layout: responsive layouts that hold up at phone width without horizontal scroll.
- Resilience: loading, error and empty states, retries, and what the user sees on a slow network.
- Working with AI: asking for accessible markup explicitly and checking it, rather than trusting the first draft.
Screening questions for frontend engineers
When a question is about layout, the screener can open a whiteboard beside the conversation. The board is saved with the answer and described to the screener, so it can ask about the sketch itself.
- Sketch how you would structure a filterable table with sorting, paging and a detail drawer. Where does the state live?
- A modal opens and keyboard users cannot reach its close button. What is wrong and how do you fix it?
- A page takes four seconds to become usable on a mid-range phone. How do you find the cause?
- An assistant generates a custom dropdown out of divs. What would you check before shipping it?
- How do you decide between a CSS solution and a JavaScript one for an interaction?
The frontend coding round
Pick a React (Vite) or Next.js starter project. The candidate works in a Cursor-like IDE with Monaco, a terminal, Testing Library tests, a live preview, completions, file-aware chat and an agent. You decide whether the round is guarded or unguarded, and the server enforces it.
Authorship tinting shows which code they typed and which they accepted from the AI. The server reruns the tests at the end, so the result does not depend on what the browser reports.
AI-fluency signals for frontend work
| Signal | What it tells you about a frontend engineer |
|---|---|
| Time to first prompt | Whether they explored the UI in the preview and read the tests first. |
| Prompt quality | Whether prompts mention states, accessibility and the specific component, not just the look. |
| AI-generated share | How much of the final markup and styling came from accepted AI output. |
| Verification | Whether they checked the preview or ran tests right after accepting a UI change. |
| Over-reliance flags | Large accepted blocks of markup or CSS that were never looked at again. |
| Recovery | What they did when a generated component broke the layout or a test. |
From scores to a decision
Each score points at the answer or edit that earned it, and fundamentals are never averaged with AI fluency. The recommendation is advice. A named person signs off the round and records the outcome, with the hiring manager and any panel on the same scorecard.
Questions
Which frameworks can a frontend coding round use?
Coding rounds run React (Vite) and Next.js projects for web frontend work, and React Native (Expo) for mobile.
Can the screen ask about UI design and layout?
Yes. A whiteboard opens beside the conversation when a section calls for it, and the screener can read and ask about what the candidate drew.
Does SynergicHire test accessibility?
If accessibility is in your plan, the screener asks about it, and you can include it in the coding task and its tests. The plan is yours to edit before you approve it.
Is the candidate on camera?
No. SynergicHire does no camera-based proctoring and no facial or emotion analysis.