How SEEK Builds Frontends: React, Design Systems & more (with Jahred Hope)

Frontend is “just HTML and CSS”, right? Not at SEEK. In this episode of SEEK Bytes – a podcast by engineers for engineers – we sit down with Jarrod Hope, Engineering Manager for Frontend Practices, to explore how SEEK builds UIs at scale with React, Braid, SKU, Vanilla Extract and Playroom, and why good frontends are genuinely hard, high-impact engineering problems. This episode's special guest: Jared Hope (SEEK Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices) In this episode you’ll learn: • How SEEK’s frontend platform works under the hood – from micro frontends and the SKU meta-framework to Metropolis, which lets teams share React components and roll out design-system updates across 80+ apps without chaos. • Why SEEK invests in open source tools like Braid, Playroom and Vanilla Extract – how “building in the open” raises quality, shapes the broader frontend community, and gives engineers type-safe CSS, shared UI language with designers, and zero-config prototyping. • Why SEEK doubled-down on React (and what’s next) – the original shift from Razor to server-rendered React, what it would take to move frameworks, and how tools like Vite, Suspense and better CSS module systems are shaping the future of the “experience platform”. Whether you’re a frontend engineer, full-stack dev, engineering manager, architect or curious IT generalist, this episode is a behind-the-scenes tour of how a large tech org thinks about UI, frameworks, tooling and open source – and how those decisions ripple through the wider web community. Whether you’re a frontend engineer, full-stack dev, engineering manager, architect or curious IT generalist, this episode is a behind-the-scenes tour of how a large tech org thinks about UI, frameworks, tooling and open source – and how those decisions ripple through the wider web community. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode