Frontend development in Manchester
Manchester's digital agencies usually win the pitch on design and then need the build to live up to it. The Figma file is approved, the launch date is set by the client's campaign, and the in-house developers are already on two other projects. That is the gap we fill: a frontend built to the agreed design, fast on a mid-range phone, accessible, and handed back in a state your team can maintain after launch.
We work in React and Next.js, build a component library from the design rather than a set of one-off pages, and treat performance and accessibility as part of the definition of done. Work ships under your agency's name if you prefer. We sit in your stand-up during the morning overlap, and your designers get a preview link for every change, so review happens while the detail is still cheap to fix.
Manchester's software market has two centres of gravity, a tram ride apart. MediaCityUK in Salford is home to BBC North and ITV, and to the production companies, post houses and broadcast suppliers that grew up around them. Their systems are about media and rights: asset libraries, scheduling, metadata that has to follow a programme from edit to broadcast to streaming, and the comments, votes and uploads that now come with so many shows. Anything that hosts what the public posts needs moderation designed in from the first episode, because the busiest night is usually the launch.
The other centre is online retail. Greater Manchester is home to THG, boohoo, AO and Auto Trader, and that concentration has produced a generation of engineers and smaller brands who think in conversion rates, warehouse cut-offs and peak trading. The mid-sized retailers we hear from have usually outgrown their first platform in stages, and the joins between the shop, the warehouse and the finance system are where the money leaks. Between the broadcasters and the retailers sit the city's digital agencies, building for clients across the North and London, and they often need engineering capacity for a quarter rather than another permanent seat.
Hiring here is cheaper than London but not cheap. ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in Manchester at £75,000 over the six months to September 2026, and GCHQ, which opened its Manchester site in 2019, now competes for the same security-minded engineers. Retailers and agencies feel the squeeze most in the run-up to peak, when a build has a fixed date and a permanent hire would arrive after it.
Working with us from Manchester fits the day you already have. Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your morning, so stand-up, review and decisions happen live with the engineer who writes the code. The afternoon runs on pull requests and written updates in your own Slack, GitHub and Linear, waiting for you when you get back from lunch, with runbooks and architecture notes written as the work goes.
We are the right fit for a defined build, a deadline before peak, or a quarter of extra senior capacity for an agency that has won more work than it can staff. Start with a fixed-price two-week piece and judge us on the result. For agencies, we work white-label under your name, in your repositories and your tools.
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 Manchester teams.
How do you work with teams in Manchester?+
Four hours of every working day overlap with yours, set across your Manchester morning, so stand-up and review happen live. We join your calls and work in your tools: Slack, GitHub and Linear. You talk directly to the engineer who writes the code. When you get back from lunch, the afternoon's work is waiting in pull requests, with notes on what changed and why, and runbooks written as we go.
Do you build for Manchester retailers and media companies?+
Yes. For online retailers we build the joins that decide the margin: stock that is right across the website, marketplaces and warehouse, returns that flow back into sellable stock, and order data that reconciles with the 3PL and the payment provider. For broadcasters and suppliers at MediaCityUK we build content and rights metadata services, delivery APIs for streaming partners, and audience features with moderation designed in.
How does your rate compare to hiring in Manchester?+
ITJobsWatch puts the median advertised salary for a software engineer in Manchester at around £75,000. Our published rate is $35/hour with a $5,000 minimum, or $5,400 a month for one engineer embedded in your team. There is no recruiting time and no employment overhead, and we can start within days of the first call. A fixed-price two-week piece at $2,800 lets you judge us on output first.
Can you take over a platform a Manchester agency built?+
Yes. In Manchester a retail or media platform often outlives the agency that built it, so this is familiar work. After a 30-minute call with the engineer, we read the code, run it, and write down how it actually works: architecture notes, the risky paths and what we would change first. That becomes a written plan within a week. A fixed-price two-week piece then ships the first real change.
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.