How SEEK Ships Frontends (Pt 2): Platforms, SSR & more (with Jahred Hope)

How do you run dozens of React apps, keep dependencies sane, preview any branch on any environment – and still move fast without breaking prod? In Part 2 of our frontend deep dive, Elliott Millar, Will and Jared Hope (Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices at SEEK) go beyond components to explore platforms, tooling and practices that power SEEK’s web experience at scale. This episode's special guest: Jared Hope (SEEK Engineering Manager, Frontend Practices) In this episode (Part 2), we explore: • How SEEK turns frontend into an “experience platform” – from modeling the web platform, static site generation and UI versioning, to giving teams self-serve routing and deployments on top of Cloudflare and serverless. • The tools that supercharge DX and design collaboration – including SEEK’s internal deploy tooling, environment-per-branch previews, and Playroom, which lets engineers and designers prototype in real components and share ideas with a single URL. • How SEEK keeps frontend modern at scale – using Upkeep and Renovate to tame dependency sprawl, exploring SSR and React server components without losing SSG DX, and leaning on devtools, hot reload and consoles for fast, pragmatic debugging. If you’re a frontend or full-stack engineer, SRE, architect, platform/DevOps engineer or IT leader who enjoyed Part 1 – or you’re just curious how high-traffic sites keep their web layer fast, safe and flexible – this Part 2 is packed with real-world patterns, trade-offs and career insights you can take back to your own org. If you’re a frontend or full-stack engineer, SRE, architect, platform/DevOps engineer or IT leader who enjoyed Part 1 – or you’re just curious how high-traffic sites keep their web layer fast, safe and flexible – this Part 2 is packed with real-world patterns, trade-offs and career insights you can take back to your own org. 👍 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode