8 Front-End Developer Interview Questions + How to Answer Them

An upcoming interview for a front-end developer position can be an exciting opportunity to explore your career potential and create web experiences that delight and engage users. Between 2017 and 2021, enrollment figures for web development training in India skyrocketed by 230 per cent, suggesting positive job growth for the field [1]. 

As the field of front-end development grows, employers are looking for important skills in job candidates. The demand for mastering web development skills like HTML, CSS, MySQL, PHP, JavaScript, and React is expected to experience an exponential 3.3-fold rise by 2025 [1]. 

Based on hiring advice from LinkedIn and Indeed, interviewers are designing questions to find out information such as: 

• The technical skills you bring to the position 

• The impact of your previous work on companies you’ve worked for, from increasing revenue to satisfying customers’ requirements

• Your ability to accept feedback on a project and collaborate with stakeholders

• Your commitment to improving your skills 

Continue reading to explore eight interview questions for front-end developers and how to prepare for your interview experience. 

8 front-end developer interview questions 

Whilst an interviewer can ask you any number of questions, it's helpful to focus on the ones that encourage you to think critically about your front-end development experience and your potential in the role you’re applying for. This list combines behavioural questions, which employers ask to learn more about your prior experience, and situational questions, which interviewers ask to estimate how you’ll fare in workplace scenarios you might encounter on the job. For each question, you will find insights into what employers are trying to find out and recommendations on how to form your answers. 

Tip: Use the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to formulate answers to behavioural and situational interview questions.

1. What can we do to optimise our web pages on the front end?

Interviewers ask this to discover how well you can spot opportunities to improve a website and verbalise your ideas. 

Prepare your answer by reviewing the company’s website in advance. Make a list of possible optimisations that you, as a front-end developer, could help to implement. Be ready to explain what impact these optimisations could have on the company’s business goals and site visitors’ experiences. 

2. What techniques do you use to improve a site’s performance? 

Interviewers ask this to better understand your technical skills and approaches to making sites impactful. 

Prepare your answer by reviewing your past or ongoing web development projects as a front-end developer. What measures did you take to improve performance? How can you quantify the results? Be sure to cover topics like decreasing page load time, removing redundancies in your code, reducing file sizes, compressing content, minimising page load requests, etc. 

3. What do you do to ensure a site is user friendly? 

Interviewers ask this to gauge your experience with and understanding of the role of UX/UI design in front-end development. 

Prepare your answer by reviewing past and ongoing web development projects as a front-end developer. What measures did you take to ensure site visitors have a rewarding experience? How can you quantify the results? Be sure to cover topics like responsive design, conducting user research, designing functional page layouts, and collaborating with UX/UI designers.

4. What are your favourite types of front-end development projects to work on and why?

Interviewers ask this to learn more about your web development passions, the motivations behind your involvement in this profession, and the diversity of your experience. They may also want to gauge how your preferences align with the projects you’d be completing if hired. 

Prepare your answer by identifying your favourite projects, the steps you took to complete them, what you learned, and the purpose behind them. Why do these types of projects stand out in your mind over others? Examples of project types might include full websites, portfolios, and music players using JavaScript. 

5. Can you walk me through your typical workflow for a new project?

Interviewers ask this to discover how websites come to life as a result of your creativity and technical skills. 

Prepare your answer by reflecting on recent projects that you are particularly proud of and mapping out the steps you took to complete them. What steps do you find essential to the success of a project? How did you develop and fine-tune this workflow? 

6. What’s a technical challenge you experienced recently, and how did you rise to the challenge? 

Interviewers ask this to get a sense of your professional resilience and determination.  

Prepare your answer by reflecting on the difficult challenges and the steps you took to overcome them. What resources did you gather? Whose support did you enlist? What methods and approaches did you try, and which one was successful? What can you now do as a result of overcoming this challenge? 

7. What resources do you use to learn the latest front-end development skills?

Interviewers ask this to gauge your commitment to continuing your front-end development education and applying your learnings to the position you’re applying for. 

Prepare your answer by reviewing courses, certifications, boot camps, and other educational experiences you’ve completed. How have you used the knowledge and skills you gained in each one to create better websites? What ideas do you have for using these skills in the job you seek? You might also research various front-end developer news sources, influencers, blogs, podcasts, and schools to find additional resources to advance your skills. Examples include freeCodeCamp, Egghead, Codecademy, W3Schools, and front-endHappy Hour.     

8. If you could master one technology this year, what would it be?

Interviewers ask this to discover your current educational priorities and how they might enhance your job performance. 

Prepare your answer by researching trends in front-end development and reflecting on your long-term career goals. When you’ve identified the trend, technique, software, or method you want to prioritise, write down your rationale. What do you want to create as a result of mastering it? Examples include progressive web applications, server-side rendering, flexible design systems, and CSS data structures. 

Interview prep tips and best practices  

Now that you’ve anticipated some questions an interviewer may ask you, you may also be wondering how to prepare for the interview. Use the following tips and best practices to get the most out of your interview.

1. Expect the interview to ask introductory and technical questions. 

In addition to the critical thinking questions, you’ll need to prepare to answer other types of questions. Some might be introductory and thus posed at the beginning of the interview as “icebreakers,” giving you and the interviewer a chance to build rapport before launching a more pointed discussion of your qualifications. Common questions of this type include: “Tell me about yourself” and “What inspired you to apply for this position?”

Front-end interviews tend to include a series of technical questions designed to test your knowledge and skills in front-end development. To prepare, review, and refresh your knowledge of priority topics like: 

• Internet protocols, HTTP, APIs, and other core internet technologies

• JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and other programming languages

• User-centred design and responsive interfaces

2. Prepare to demonstrate your coding skills live. 

A common component of front-end developer interviews is a live demonstration of your coding skills. Employers want to get a sense of the value a candidate can offer the company by presenting a coding challenge for the candidate to address on the spot. 

Prepare by practising common coding challenges for front-end developers, such as designing a sign-up form, creating an e-commerce order summary webpage, cloning an existing website, and creating a bar graph from scratch.

For more ideas on preparing for the technical and coding portions of a front-end developer interview, take the Coding Interview Preparation course from the Meta Front-End Developer Professional Certificate Programme.

3. Hone your interviewing skills.

Having baseline interviewing skills can be a confidence booster during any conversation with a potential employer. Practise the following skills before your upcoming front-end developer interview and commit to honing them as you advance in your career: 

• Researching the company to become familiar with its mission statement, values, target audience, product offerings, and web development needs 

• Communicating your ideas clearly 

• Reviewing your qualifications so that you can present them with ease

4. Prepare a few questions to ask the interviewer. 

Asking the interviewer questions throughout the conversation can demonstrate your enthusiasm for the role and help you gather the information you need to make an empowered career decision. Prepare questions in advance based on your company research, and listen carefully during the interview for opportunities to ask qualifying questions about anything you discuss with the interviewer. 

5. Prepare to discuss your salary expectations. 

It’s important to have a firm sense of the salary you expect or desire in a new role, even if your interviewer doesn’t bring up the subject during the interview. When you have a numerical range in mind and the rationale behind it, you can approach the entire job search process feeling confident in your earning potential and qualifications. 

Conduct front-end developer salary research on various career sites to find average salaries for different job titles as well as the factors that can affect salary, such as experience, education, and skills. For example, Glassdoor reports that front-end developers earn, on average, ₹6,05,000per year as of July 2024 [2]. As a senior front-end developer, you can expect to earn ₹17,23,138 per year [3]. Bengaluru, Gurgaon, and Pune are among the top-paying cities for front-end developers in India [4]. 

*Glassdoor salary figures include base pay and additional compensation such as tips, commission, and profit sharing. 

Build job-ready skills with Coursera

Taking online courses can be a great way to sharpen your skills and knowledge for an interview, as well as explore opportunities for your career at large. Check out professional certificate programmes from industry leaders such as Google and IBM on Coursera.

In IBM's Full Stack Software Developer Professional Certificate, you'll master the most up-to-date practical skills and tools that full-stack developers use daily while also building your GitHub portfolio by applying your skills to multiple labs and hands-on projects, including a capstone.

Google's UX Design Professional Certificate, meanwhile, will take you through the UX design process, introduce approaches to applying foundational UX concepts, and conclude with you building a professional UX portfolio that includes three end-to-end projects: a mobile phone app, a responsive website, and a cross-platform experience.