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Front End Developer skills: what to learn first, and what can wait

Nobody hiring a front end developer asks how many frameworks you've touched. They open your deployed project on their phone, tab through it with the keyboard, and pop open DevTools. Learn the skills below in this order and your practice time goes where that check actually lands.

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Step one

Gets you the interview

Semantic HTML and modern CSS layoutA real button instead of a clickable div, headings in order, labels tied to inputs. Then Flexbox and CSS Grid until a layout holds from a narrow phone to a wide monitor without a pile of media queries. Reviewers resize your demo first.

JavaScript you can explain, with TypeScript on topClosures, promises, async and await, array methods, and how the DOM actually updates. Typing your props and API responses in TypeScript is now close to assumed, and a project full of any types reads as a shortcut.

One framework, properly: React, Vue or AngularPick the one your local postings name most and go deep. In React that means state, effects, controlled forms and when a component re-renders. Knowing one well beats a portfolio with a tutorial app in each.

Git and a clean pull requestSmall commits with messages that say why, a branch per change, and a PR description a reviewer can follow. Screeners do click through to your GitHub history, and a single giant commit called final tells them a lot.

Step two

Gets you the offer

Accessibility you can test yourselfKeyboard focus that never gets lost, visible focus rings, ARIA only where native HTML falls short, and a quick pass with axe DevTools and VoiceOver or NVDA. Interviewers ask about it because most candidates can't answer beyond alt text.

Talking to real APIsFetch data, show a loading state, handle the error and the empty list, and don't fire a request on every keystroke. Tools like TanStack Query or SWR help, but the take-home grader is watching whether you thought about the failure case.

Testing with Jest or Vitest and Testing LibraryTests that click and type the way a user would, not tests that poke at internal state. A couple of Playwright or Cypress checks on the main flow show you've worked somewhere with a CI pipeline.

Building straight from a Figma fileReading spacing tokens, inspecting components, and noticing when the design has no hover, error or mobile state. Asking the designer about the missing state before you build is what a hiring manager wants to hear in the behavioural round.

Step three

Gets you promoted

Performance work you can measureRun Lighthouse and the Performance panel, then fix what they find: oversized images, render-blocking scripts, a bundle dragging in a whole date library. Core Web Vitals get discussed in planning, and the dev who moves them gets noticed.

Owning a component library or design systemShared buttons, modals and form fields in Storybook, with props other teams can't misuse. It's slow, unglamorous work, and it turns you into the person every squad depends on.

Build tooling and rendering choicesKnowing why the app uses Vite or webpack, when server rendering with Next.js or Nuxt helps, and how code splitting changes what loads first. Seniors make those calls, then defend them in a design review.

Reviewing other people's codeComments that explain the why, catch the missing loading state, and don't nitpick formatting a linter should handle. Once your reviews start teaching juniors, the senior title usually follows.

Certificates worth your time

Certificate	Best for	Effort	Worth it?
Meta Front-End Developer Professional Certificate	Career changers who want a structured path through HTML, CSS, JavaScript and React	several months of evenings	Useful as a course, weak as a credential. Take it for the structure, then spend your energy on the portfolio project, because that's what a hiring manager actually opens.
IAAP Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC)	Developers heading toward accessibility-focused roles or teams in government and education	a few months of steady study	The one front end-adjacent certificate that carries real weight, but only for accessibility work. For a general front end seat, skip it.

Check the course content, exam details and current price with Coursera or IAAP directly before you pay for anything.

Put it on your résumé like this

Weak

Responsible for building UI components and fixing front end bugs.

Strong

Built a shared React and TypeScript component library of 35 Storybook components used by 4 product teams, and fixed 60+ keyboard and screen reader issues flagged in an axe audit.

Questions people ask

Do I still need to learn CSS if I use Tailwind?

Yes. Tailwind is just CSS with shorter names, so when a layout breaks you're debugging the box model, specificity or a flex container either way. Learn plain CSS first and Tailwind takes an afternoon.

How much back end should a front end developer know?

Enough to read an API response, understand status codes and cookies, and ask the back end team a precise question. You don't need to design a database. A small Node or Express API in one project shows you can talk across the line.

Is it worth learning Next.js early?

Once React feels comfortable, yes. Plenty of postings name it, and it forces you to learn routing and server rendering. Starting there before you understand plain React tends to leave you confused about which code runs where.

Should I learn a CSS preprocessor like Sass?

It can wait. Native CSS now has variables and nesting, so Sass mostly shows up in older codebases. If a job's codebase uses it, you'll pick it up in a day.

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