Frontend development in Boston
Scientists will forgive an interface that looks plain. They will not forgive one that freezes when a screen loads thousands of assay results, or a plate map that hides the one well they need to check. In Boston's biotech companies, many internal front ends began as a quick dashboard written by a computational biologist, then became the tool a whole department depends on before anyone designed it.
We rebuild those in React without taking away what people rely on. Large tables are virtualised so they scroll at full speed, filters and selections live in the URL so a result can be sent to a colleague, and charts are drawn from the same data the export uses, so the picture and the spreadsheet never disagree. We watch scientists use the current tool first, because the workarounds they have built around its gaps are the real specification. Keyboard and screen reader use are tested by hand, not left to an automated check.
Boston's software buyers mostly work in science, medicine, education and money: biotech and pharmaceutical companies in Cambridge and the Seaport, the hospital systems, digital health start-ups, the universities and the companies spun out of them, and the asset managers and insurers downtown. In most of them, software supports something else, an experiment, a patient or a portfolio. The people who commission it are often scientists and clinicians, many of whom write some code themselves and know exactly what they need the data to do. What they want from an engineer is not a new idea. It is the idea they already have, made reliable.
The work follows the science. Biotech labs need instrument output picked up as it lands and linked to the notebook entry that explains it, and internal tools that stay fast on thousands of assay results. Digital health companies need a backend that can read from a hospital's records system, and patient apps that save offline and keep the time each entry was made. Edtech companies selling to universities need platforms that know a teaching assistant from a department administrator. Lab suppliers need commerce that runs on purchase orders and negotiated prices, and the investment firms downtown need internal tools to replace the workbooks that run their operations.
Hiring has its own shape. Built In puts the average software engineer base salary in Boston at about $137,000, and the city's engineers are pulled between big tech offices, well-funded biotech and university spin-outs. The universities keep research talent in good supply. What teams more often lack is someone who has taken a system from a notebook or a prototype to something that runs unattended, is monitored, and survives its author going back to the lab. That gap, between a result that works once and a system that keeps working, is where we are most useful.
We are in Bengaluru and move our working day for Boston. Four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Eastern time, stand-up included, so questions, reviews and decisions happen live with the engineer who writes the code. Runbooks and architecture notes are written as we go, so the system keeps running when the people who commissioned it go back to the lab.
We are the right fit for the gap between a result that works once and a system that keeps working: a pipeline, a hospital integration, a patient app, an internal tool. Senior capacity starts within days, the first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement, and it can carry you from a funding round or grant to your first engineering hire.
Four ways this arrives.
We measure on real devices and real traffic first, not a lab score on a fast laptop. The fix is usually less JavaScript: a smaller bundle, images sized for the screen, and third-party scripts that stop blocking the first render.
A procurement checklist, a customer complaint, or a letter from a lawyer. We fix the causes rather than the line items: real buttons, labelled forms, focus that lands somewhere sensible, and automated checks in CI so it stays fixed.
Global state that everything reads, no types, and three versions of the same modal. We add TypeScript file by file, put tests on the flows that make money, and move shared pieces into one component library as screens are touched.
Usually for search visibility or first-load speed. We move it route by route behind the same URLs, so the old app keeps serving while the new one takes over, and nobody has to sign off a risky weekend cut-over.
A Next.js web app with five operational dashboards and Tableau reports rendered in place, without a second login.
Read the write-up →Asked by Boston teams.
How do you work with teams in Boston?+
We are in Bengaluru and move our working day for Boston, so four hours of every working day overlap with your morning in Eastern time, stand-up included. We join your Slack, push to your GitHub and track the work in your Linear, so progress shows up where your team already looks. The person on every call is the engineer who writes the code, whether you are a scientist, a clinician or a CTO.
Do you build for Boston's biotech and life sciences companies?+
Yes. The work is usually the software around the science: pipelines that pick up plate reader, sequencer and imaging output as it lands and link it to the notebook entry, internal tools that stay fast on thousands of assay results, and search over protocols and SOPs that always cites the current version. We work alongside your computational scientists, turning what already works in their notebooks into systems that run unattended.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Boston?+
Built In puts the average software engineer base salary in Boston at about $137,000, before bonus and benefits. Our published rate is $35/hour, or $5,400 a month for an embedded engineer, with a $5,000 minimum. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and work starts within days of the call. The first piece is a fixed-price two-week engagement at $2,800, so you judge us on what it produces.
What do the first two weeks look like?+
You share the context: the code, the data and the problem. Within two days you have a 30-minute call with the engineer who would do the work, and within a week a written plan. Then comes a fixed-price two-week piece at $2,800, such as turning one notebook or prototype into something that runs on its own. At the end you have working code in your repository, notes on how it runs, and a clear view of what comes next.
Do we need to move to Next.js?+
Not always. If the app sits behind a login and nobody finds it through search, a well-built React single-page app on Vite is simpler to host and easier to reason about. Next.js earns its keep when first load and search visibility matter, or when you want rendering close to the data. We will tell you which case you are before anyone rewrites a route.
Can you work from our Figma files?+
Yes, and we will ask questions about them. Designs rarely show the loading state, the empty state, the error, or what happens when a name is twice as long as the mock-up assumed. We raise those early and propose something, rather than inventing it quietly in code and leaving your designer to find out in review.
Will you build us a design system?+
We will build the one your product needs, which is usually smaller than people expect: design tokens, the components you actually use, and Storybook to show them. We extract it from the screens you already have rather than designing it in isolation, because a component library nobody migrates to is just a second way of doing things.
How do you handle accessibility?+
We build to WCAG 2.2 AA by default, test with a keyboard and a screen reader, and run automated checks in CI so regressions are caught before they ship. Automated tools find only part of the problem, so we also test the key journeys by hand: sign-up, checkout, and anything a user does every day.
Do you only do the front end, or the API as well?+
Either. A lot of front-end pain is really an API shaped for a different screen, and when that is the case we can fix both sides. If your backend team owns the API, we write down what the front end needs from it and agree the contract with them, rather than working around it in the browser.