- 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 energetic search layouts
- System Ownership: Take accountability for the reliability and observability of the search funnel, from query planner refactors to real-time retrieval monitoring

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.

- AI/ML Familiarity: Experience partnering with Data Science to deploy and leverage machine learning and gen-AI systems in search experiences across ranking and retrievalStrategic Leadership: Demonstrated ability to contribute to team strategy without supervision and influence the broader organizational roadmapDomain 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 MySQLProduct Sensibility: A strong user-first mindset and the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical directionExperience: 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years as a technical leader driving complex, cross-team projects

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📌 Staff Backend Engineer (Search FX, Discovery Experience) (Toronto)
🏢 Faire
📍 Toronto