Staff Backend Engineer, Faire
Search FX, Discovery Experience
$231-318k
+ Equity
More information about location
3 days a week in office
Online wholesale marketplace
Be an early applicant
Online wholesale marketplace
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$231-318k
+ Equity
More information about location
3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To empower brands and retailers to strengthen the unique character of local communities.
Role
Who you are
- Experience: 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years as a technical leader driving complex, cross-team projects
- Product Sensibility: A strong user-first mindset and the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical direction
- AI/ML Familiarity: Experience partnering with Data Science to deploy and leverage machine learning and gen-AI systems in search experiences across ranking and retrieval
- Domain Expertise: knowledge of search/query processing, including traditional, semantic, and hybrid frameworks (e.g., Elasticsearch, Lucene)
- Technical Stack: Strong programming skills in Kotlin or Java, with experience in high-performance backend systems, Protocol Buffers, and MySQL
- Strategic Leadership: Demonstrated ability to contribute to team strategy without supervision and influence the broader organizational roadmap
What the job involves
- The Discovery Search team (Search FX) sits at the intersection of search, evaluation, and personalization shaping how retailers find the products they love
- Our mission is to build the most intuitive, intelligent, and delightful discovery experience in wholesale: one that feels less like a search engine and more like a trusted merchant with an encyclopedic knowledge of what's in stock and what will sell
- As a Staff Engineer on the Search FX team, you will be a primary technical architect for our retailer-facing search surfaces
- You will own the technical roadmap for search, recommendations, and Gen-AI experiences that drive a meaningful share of marketplace engagement
- You will bridge the gap between high-scale infrastructure and world-class UX, helping unify retrieval, ranking, and personalization into a cohesive, high-performance system
- You will own the technical vision: Define the end-to-end architecture for Faire's search and discovery experience, ensuring it is fast, relevant, and deeply personalized
- You’ll build at the AI frontier: Integrate LLM-powered capabilities, such as natural language search and intelligent query understanding, directly into the product
- You’ll solve complex scale problems: Help build high-scale, low-latency systems that navigate millions of products while meeting strict industry latency benchmarks
- You’ll drive cross-functional impact: Partner closely with Data Science, Product, and Design to iterate on ranking models and UX components
- You’ll be a mentor and leader: Foster a culture of engineering excellence and ownership, upskilling the team on technical expertise and decision-making
- Architect Next-Gen Search: Lead the design of composable grids, intent-aware routing, and orchestration layers that unify retrieval and ranking
- Modernize Query Understanding: Leverage LLMs to consolidate the QU stack, improving accuracy for long-tail queries and edge cases
- Optimize Performance: Drive initiatives to increase retrieval candidates (e.g., 10x growth) while maintaining stable search latency
- Launch AI-Driven Features: Develop systems like "Search Missions" that use offline pipelines and LLMs to recover failed search sessions through expanded queries
- Bridge AI and UX: Work with client engineers on SDUI and React Server Components to improve performance and developer velocity for dynamic search layouts
- System Ownership: Take accountability for the reliability and observability of the search funnel, from query planner refactors to real-time retrieval monitoring
Our take
Faire is helping retailers find and buy wholesale merchandise for their stores, pairing independent brands with retailers. The company connects two million retailers globally to hundreds of thousands of brands across the globe.
In addition to a large catalog, the company attracts smaller retailers by offering net 60-day terms and free returns to boost confident buying at unpredictable times. Faire has seen impressive growth, reporting 300% year-on-year volume growth and a valuation of over $12.6B following its most recent tranche of funding from Shopify.
This investment is funding its continuing expansion into European and Australian markets, while accelerating product development, focusing on its OS for wholesale. It is also hiring talent globally as it takes aim at becoming a kind of Amazon for local and indie brands that want to sell globally.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
109% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 11 rounds)
May 2022
$416m
SERIES G
Nov 2021
$400m
SERIES G
Total funding: $1.5bn
Company benefits
- Comprehensive healthcare: Including Health, Dental, Vision and Disability for all our locations.
- Time off: Paid time off, holidays and company-wide "Faire Fundays".
- Parental leave: Generous parental and family leave, as well as fertility support benefits.
- Productivity support: Monthly stipends to help cover work from home connectivity needs.
- Annual learning grant: For personal and professional development, as well as unlimited access to training courses through LinkedIn Learning.
- Thoughtfully designed spaces: All of our offices have been designed with local in mind – from our architects to our coffee blends.
- Fitness and well-being benefits: Including monthly credit towards your wellness-related programmes.
- Mental health benefits: Including free access to Modern Health therapists and resources.
- Charitable matching: Faire will match up to £250 of your charity donations, every year.
- Career planning: Whether you want to grow as a leader, hone your craft or explore a new discipline, our career framework allows space for you to explore.
Company HQ
Mission District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Max Rhodes
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously an Advisor at Blunt Umbrellas and a Director of Consumer Product at Square.
Marcelo Cortes
(Co-Founder 7 Chief Architect)Previously a Senior Software Engineer at Google. Prior to that, they co-founded FreePoint Inc.
Jeff Kolovson
(Co-Founder & COO)Previously an Operations Lead at Square. Prior to that, they were a Business Analyst for McKinsey and Co.
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