Talk to people. You should be asking these questions to your direct management. They clearly don't have a great onboarding process (even more difficult if you're remote) so you'll need to do some extra work to stay on top of things and figure out how your role fits within the team and the company.
Yep. Ask them what are the essential duties of your role. Then ask, 'But what would be really GREAT?"
Though it's probably obvious to you, my first thought about describing to others how to deliver an ideal front end would be to "minimize impedance mismatch". Somehow you need to plant a flag in the minds of upper management that you know how to make an app "a joy to use", or totally obvious to use.
But is that what your management really wants from the person responsible for the front end? Or is it something else, like inventing a signature visual interface to better brand the product? Or streamlining the app's infrastructure to simplify reengineering/refactoring/repair?
If you're looking to create a manifesto that you can sell as a unifying strategy for UI, IMHO no company has valued front ends more than Apple, and Jef Raskin was one of those most dedicated to making computers 'obvious' to use. His manifesto ("The Humane Interface") has to be a good source of ideas on which to base your 'front end mantra', as would the book "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" by Apple.
