Staff Engineer - Growth Platform

at Faire

Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Canada

About Faire

Faire is a technology wholesale platform built on the belief that the future is local. Independent retailers around the globe collectively represent a multi-hundred-billion-dollar wholesale market that has historically been fragmented and offline. At Faire, we're using the power of tech, data, and machine learning to connect this thriving community of entrepreneurs across the globe. Picture your favorite boutique in town — we help them discover the best products from around the world to sell in their stores. With the right tools and insights, we believe that we can level the playing field so businesses can grow and local communities can thrive.

We’re looking for smart, resourceful and passionate people to join us as we power the shop local movement. If you believe in community, come join ours.

Help build the engine behind Faire’s growth:

Faire is building the operating system for local retail. Every day, hundreds of thousands of independent retailers and brands rely on Faire to discover products, grow their businesses, and compete with large marketplaces. Growth is a company-level priority at Faire because every improvement in acquisition, activation, conversion, retention, and expansion directly impacts the success of local entrepreneurs around the world.

We’re hiring a Staff Software Engineer to help lead the technical vision and evolution of Faire’s Growth Platform - the communication systems, targeting capabilities, experimentation infrastructure and developer tooling that power growth across the company.

This is not just a builder role, you will set technical direction, shape strategy, and lead complex, cross-functional initiatives that accelerate Growth teams across multiple product areas. You’ll partner deeply with Product Engineers to translate ambiguous opportunities into scalable platform systems.

You’re excited about this role because…

You want to build foundational systems that accelerate growth across multiple teams and product surfaces
You enjoy solving challenging technical problems related to messaging, communication, personalization, targeting, and developer velocity
You care deeply about internal customer experience and enjoy building tools, platforms, and workflows that make other teams dramatically more effective
You get excited about creating leverage through platforms, abstractions, and tooling rather than only shipping individual features
You get excited about driving large business impact in a Growth environment.

What you'll do:

Lead the design and evolution of Faire’s Growth Platform capabilities, including communication and messaging infrastructure, targeting systems, developer tooling, and reusable growth primitives
Partner closely with internal platform users to understand pain points, improve developer experience, and create highly usable self-serve growth tooling
Architect scalable systems that enable teams to rapidly launch, validate, and scale growth initiatives
Build frameworks and abstractions that reduce the cost and complexity of launching new growth initiatives
Influence product and business strategy through deep technical insight and a strong understanding of growth levers
Improve developer productivity and organizational efficiency by evolving platform tooling, frameworks, and operational processes
Mentor and guide engineers across teams, raising the bar for technical quality, systems thinking, and business impact
Operate as a cross-team technical leader, aligning multiple stakeholders and driving execution across organizational boundaries

We’re excited about you because you:

Have 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Have experience building high-scale platforms, infrastructure, or reusable systems that enabled other engineering teams to move faster
Demonstrate strong internal customer empathy and a track record of building platforms or tooling with high adoption and strong developer experience
Have strong experience in either:

Backend development (e.g., Kotlin, Java, C#, APIs, databases, distributed systems), or
Frontend development (e.g., React, TypeScript/JavaScript, modern UI frameworks, performance optimization).

Have consistently led large, ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives with measurable impact
Have strong experience with experimentation, A/B testing, and data-driven product development.
Think in terms of systems, leverage, and long-term scalability, not just feature delivery.
Are comfortable defining technical direction in loosely defined problem spaces.
Demonstrate strong product and business acumen, connecting engineering decisions to growth outcomes.
Have a track record of mentoring engineers and influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team.
Are highly autonomous, strategic, and execution-oriented in fast-moving environments.
Have a strong foundation in computer science fundamentals or equivalent industry experience.

Technologies we use & teach:

(Experience in similar technologies is welcomed)

Backend: Kotlin, Java, JUnit, Hibernate, Guice, Jersey, MySQL, CockroachDB, AWS
Frontend: React, TypeScript/JavaScript
Infrastructure & Data: HTTP, JSON, Protocol Buffers, experimentation frameworks, analytics tooling

Salary range:

Canada: the pay range for this role is $190,500 - $262,000 per year.

This role will also be eligible for equity and benefits. Actual base pay will be determined based on permissible factors such as transferable skills, work experience, market demands, and primary work location. The base pay range provided is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

Hybrid Faire employees currently go into the office 3 days per week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and a third flex day of their choosing (Monday, Wednesday, or Friday). Additionally, hybrid in-office roles will have the flexibility to work remotely up to 4 weeks per year. Specific Workplace and Information Technology positions may require onsite attendance 5 days per week as will be indicated in the job posting.

Why you’ll love working at Faire

Move fast: You'll own meaningful problems that serve customers around the globe with the agency to move fast and see your results clearly.
Equipped to scale: We invest in what matters, including the latest enterprise AI tools, to help you work smarter and get more out of every day.
Best in class: Our team is full of sharp, kind, and generous colleagues who care about their craft and about helping you grow in yours.
Real rewards. Competitive pay, equity, and comprehensive benefits designed to support your life inside and outside of work.
Belonging: We're intentional about building an environment where every Faire employee has equal access to opportunities, growth, and success.

Faire was founded in 2017 by a team of early product and engineering leads from Square. We’re backed by some of the top investors in retail and tech including: Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and DST Global. We have headquarters in San Francisco and Kitchener-Waterloo, and a global employee presence across offices in Toronto, London, and New York. To learn more about Faire and our customers, you can read more on our blog.

Faire provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Faire is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. Accommodations are available throughout the recruitment process and applicants with a disability may request to be accommodated throughout the recruitment process. We will work with all applicants to accommodate their individual accessibility needs. To request reasonable accommodation, please fill out our Accommodation Request Form (https://bit.ly/faire-form)

Privacy

For information about the type of personal data Faire collects from applicants, as well as your choices regarding the data collected about you, please visit Faire’s Privacy Notice (https://www.faire.com/privacy)