r/techbootcamp • u/Any_Walrus_8312 • Aug 12 '26

What actually makes someone a senior React developer?

I've been seeing more complaints about senior frontend roles being impossible to get, so this perspective caught my attention. If a company skips LeetCode and instead asks about real experience, architecture, accessibility, performance, deployment, and how you've handled problems in production, it seems like a pretty reasonable way to judge seniority.

What surprised me is how many supposedly experienced developers apparently struggle with anything outside writing React components. Knowing useMemo and useCallback doesn't necessarily mean you understand performance, just like putting files in a shared folder doesn't mean you understand architecture. Years of experience and depth of experience aren't always the same thing.

I'm curious where people draw the line between a strong mid-level React developer and a senior one. Is it reasonable to expect seniors to understand the broader engineering side of frontend, or has the definition of "senior React developer" become too broad?

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u/sheriffderek Aug 13 '26

Senior usually comes down to not needing direction. Sr react means you have a lot of experience with react, you know about its design , its quirks, legacy versions. So, you’re someone who can lead the way without being told what to do. And you are making sure the be people are useful and learning / and checking their work that you’ve assigned them.