What Makes a Great Front-End Architect? Lessons from Six Years at Taobao

I have been at Taobao for over six years, happy to work in technology, and have been responsible for business, foundational libraries, tools, and architecture. I want to reflect on my work and start with the topic of “front‑end architecture”.

Discussing Architecture

Good code and bad code can both run, but we pursue good code for better maintainability and readability. Similarly, a system without architecture can work, yet a team without good architecture falls into chaos and cannot support rapid business changes.

Architecture exists to solve problems, turning complex, vague issues into clear, logical ones. The scope can range from company‑wide system design to a single module’s rendering, and from immediate concerns to future challenges. Good architecture simplifies problems, finds optimal solutions, balances cost and risk, and evolves over time.

The architecture I pursue must be clear, logical, simple, flexible, extensible, solve real problems, and support fast, stable business growth while continuously evolving.

Discussing Front‑End Architects

An architect is essentially the designer or builder of architecture. As described in “What Does an Architect Actually Do?”:

A good architect repeatedly does four things: first, choose a good challenge; second, make simple things seem complex; third, make complex things simple; fourth, explain the complex things simply. The first creates value, the second controls risk and prepares for the future, the third delivers product quality while controlling cost, and the fourth ensures knowledge transfer.

Front‑end architects rely on team support and, as front‑end systems grow, their value and impact increase. They connect product, design, front‑end, back‑end, client, engineering, data, and operations teams, using a user‑experience perspective to uncover and solve problems. They can lead the design and implementation of all technical subsystems and even influence organizational structure, such as the emergence of terminal engineers.

Key goals include high performance, high availability, easy extensibility, and reducing system complexity. To address slow first‑screen load times, we followed these steps:

Understand the business : research current business and competitors, grasp the rendering chain and identify issues.

Explore solutions : anticipate future directions and investigate options like SSR, ER, pre‑rendering, pre‑loading, static generation.

Evaluate solutions : discuss with peers, assess feasibility, complexity, foresight, and ROI; select at least one candidate, e.g., SSR.

Demo development : build demos for each candidate to validate risks and feasibility.

Solution design : map the full SSR chain, collaborate with partners, produce detailed RFC documentation.

RFC review : thoroughly review design and implementation until consensus, define responsibilities, ensure executability.

Implementation : drive development, communicate with teams, participate in coding, and connect development and operations pipelines.

Knowledge transfer : document, share via meetings or articles, help others understand and adopt SSR, provide support, and promote adoption.

Continuous evolution : monitor SSR advancements and evolve the pipeline, e.g., personalized SSR or SSR combined with ER.

From development and build to full‑user rollout, data measurement, and issue tracing, we delivered a complete SSR solution shaped by front‑end architectural decisions.

A front‑end architect does more than produce diagrams; they ensure correct execution, dive into implementation, code alongside teams, and communicate across groups. Their influence spans the entire user‑experience chain, requiring aesthetic sense, problem‑finding ability, and the capacity to simplify complex systems while anticipating future needs.

Thoughts and Summary

Reflecting on my past work, trust from the team and the evolution of the “big front‑end” have allowed continuous learning, thoughtful practice, and balanced refactoring and collaboration. I consider myself a front‑end solution architect, still with growth areas. I believe a good architect must excel technically and understand business, designing both overall structures and local implementations.

Technical excellence is foundational. In daily development, write readable, extensible code, explore better implementations, and actively participate in code reviews. Continuous coding practice cultivates architectural thinking; without hands‑on coding, one cannot feel the pain points or adjust designs effectively.

Architects need both breadth and depth—a “T‑shaped” growth model.

Breadth : have multiple solution options and understand relationships across the stack.

Depth : solve problems others cannot and guide investigations.

Understanding business and staying attuned to its changes ensures architecture supports current needs and remains forward‑looking, avoiding “using a hammer for a nail” scenarios.

Strong communication and coordination are essential, as architects often navigate cross‑team or cross‑BU technical proposals, requiring trust and negotiation to align diverse interests.

Finally, architecture design does not require a formal title; anyone can contribute with a big‑picture mindset, continuously optimizing and executing to write good code, build solid architecture, and boost team cohesion and effectiveness.

There are no shortcuts to becoming a good architect—continuous learning, relentless questioning, and constant improvement are the path forward.