Accessibility Engineer

Posted May 28

You will become our go-to expert for accessibility, to ensure all products meet or exceed WCAG 2.1 level AA guidelines.

Details of the Role

  • Location: Remote (preference for UTC-6 to UTC+5).
  • Type of work: Full-time (contractor or employee depending on circumstances).
  • Level: 4 or above.
  • We're a remote company, we prefer asynchronous communication over meetings.

About the company

MUI started with Material UI, the most successful React implementation of Google's Material Design. We have gained a large following, thanks to our focus on Material Design fidelity, our obsession with details, on offering a large number of components, our community engagement, and by carefully improving the DX. Today, countless teams and organizations rely on our open-source libraries to build their design system.

A couple of years ago, we started to expand our suite of products. We released MUI X, a collection of advanced components; MUI Design kits, the MUI components available for Figma, Sketch, etc.; and also host Templates, a set of pre-built UI kits. We've seen rapid growth with all of them (2-3x per year) and we have more to come. We are building a low-code platform for developers to significantly increase the speed and lower the barrier for creating simple CRUD/dashboard UIs with MUI's libraries.

We are a fully distributed team, spread across multiple time zones. We work mainly asynchronously, relying mostly on written collaboration. Every contributor has the freedom to define how they work — the rest of us won't know what you're doing day-to-day unless you tell us. For additional details about the MUI team and culture, you can check our careers and about pages and also our public Handbook.

Why we're hiring

Accessibility is a strategic opportunity for MUI, across our products:

  1. We are building Base UI for the developers that are looking for a relatively lower-level API while keeping a strong baseline to build on top of that saves them time. For them, it's about having a better customizability experience (style & behavior). The most exigent users of Base UI, the ones that are spreading the viral growth of the product in the community, have strong a11y requirements. So we have to meet them for Base UI to be successful.
  2. Accessibility is mandated by law. For example, in the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a US law enacted in 1990 to ensure people with disabilities are not discriminated against. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act (AEE) will soon be enacted. Our paid customers are increasingly asking about compliance with WCAG.

Both our open-source community and our premium products are growing fast (x2 YoY). We need talented people to keep that going!

Why this is interesting

Our products empower React developers to build awesome applications faster – we see millions of developers on MUI's docs every year, one million a month.

So, by improving the accessibility of our components, you will help millions of end-users who use the products built with our UI library. You will also be responsible to train the developers using MUI's products to a11y. For example, there might be an opportunity to create an eslint plugin aware of Material UI APIs to catch a11y issues before they go to production.

About the role

What you'll do on a day-to-day basis

Depending on the day, you'll:

  • Ensure the components are accessible. You will be the owner of the accessibility across all MUI products. First, you will be responsible to verify the level of accessibility the components comply with and then implementing improvements over time.
  • Respond to issues related to accessibility. The users of our products create issues related to a11y. You will be responsible to unlock the community, either by providing best practices, guiding them to contribute a fix, or by directly fixing the issues reported.
  • Intelligently apply accessibility testing tools. You will use assistive technology and perform expert manual analysis of the MUI product lines. Having a solid test framework that can help us make sure we stay compliant.
  • Lead the accessibility training across the company. You will be the go-to person for anything related to accessibility. You will mentor other team members.

About you

Skills you should have

  • Strong grasp of accessibility techniques in web development applying HTML5, CSS, ARIA, and JavaScript. You should have held a Front-end Engineer (or closely related) role in the past.
  • A track record of accessibility experience with both consumer/enterprise products and assistive technologies, such as screen readers, eye control, and other accessibility technologies. If you've been the accessibility champ in a previous company, pushing towards making sure the user interfaces can be used by disabled people, we want you in our team!
  • Hands-on knowledge of accessibility guidelines and standards (such as Section 508, WCAG, and EN 301 549) as well as technologies (such as UI Automation, IAccessible, ARIA, and related accessibility APIs) You would be the one who the team can go to with any a11y topics/questions.
  • An advocate of continuous learning; able to absorb and share new ideas, approaches, and techniques for achieving accessibility. Continuous learning is one of the most important parts of this field.
  • Experience with assistive technologies across multiple platforms, including screen readers, magnification, and read-aloud tools.

What would be nice if you had, but isn't required

  • Certification in accessibility, such as Trusted Tester, CPACC (Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies), WAS (Web Accessibility Specialist). This would be a clear indication that you went deep into the accessibility topics.
  • You've contributed to a design system before. You have worked on enterprise components in the past, maybe for internal use in your company. You have built some features while making sure the accessibility was fully functional.

Benefits & Compensation

Competitive compensation depending on the profile and location. We are ready to pay top market rates for a person that can clearly exceed the role's expectations. You can find the other perks & benefits on the careers page.

How to apply?

Apply now for this position 📮

Don't tick every bullet? Apply anyway! Research shows that certain folx are less likely to apply for a role than others unless they meet 100% of the outlined qualifications. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you. We'd love for you to share the unique skills, passion, and experience you could bring to MUI.