Staff Backend Engineer - Ads Formats

Reposted Yesterday
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Toronto, ON, CAN
In-Office
191K-262K Annually
Senior level
eCommerce • Fintech • Machine Learning • Retail
Faire is the online marketplace where retailers discover their next bestsellers from the world’s best independent brands
The Role
Lead design and build of high-scale, low-latency backend systems for premium ad formats. Define architecture for unified serving and rendering, enable experimentation and optimization, collaborate with Product/Design/Data Science, mentor engineers, and drive availability, scalability, and roadmap for ad formats.
Summary Generated by Built In

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.

About the Role:

The Ads Supply pod grows Faire's Ads business by expanding where, how, and in what format ads show up. Almost all of Faire's ads today are promoted product listings, and we'll unlock top-of-market opportunities for our advertisers with premium creative formats.

As a technical leader, you'll own building the high-scale, low-latency systems that serve and render premium formats like video and brand creative across every surface and device. Working hands-on across the full stack and co-shaping the experience with Product and Design, you'll unify creative serving, formats, and rendering into one cohesive system, partnering closely with Ads Delivery and Ads Bidding and enabling fast, measurable experimentation. You'll also set the technical direction for ad formats at Faire and shape the roadmap for what we build next.

What You'll Do:

  • Own the technical vision: Define the end-to-end architecture for our next-generation ad formats, including a unified serving layer that keeps the experience fast, scalable, and reliable across surfaces and devices.
  • Build the systems behind every format: Design highly automated systems for ad format serving, optimization, and A/B testing that maximize business outcomes.
  • Lay the foundations for future formats: Build the framework-level solutions that make new formats faster to ship and deepen how well we understand our users.
  • Invent what comes next: Conceptualize, prototype, and run experiments on new ad format ideas, drawing on market trends, user behavior, and advertiser needs to find the opportunities with real business impact.
  • Drive cross-functional impact: Operate as a product builder who brings customer understanding to the work, partnering closely with Product, Design, Data Science, and other engineering teams to deliver cohesive, high-impact solutions.
  • Raise the engineering bar: Advocate for and apply best practices across availability, scalability, operational excellence, and cost management.
  • Mentor and lead: Guide and upskill other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, ownership, and continuous learning.

Qualifications:

  • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years as a technical leader driving complex, cross-team projects.
  • Deep expertise in building and scaling ad formats or similar user-facing content delivery systems.
  • Excellent programming and system design skills, with a proven track record of leading and operating highly available, high-performance, low-latency backend systems at scale.
  • AI-native, using modern AI tooling as a core part of how you deliver impact and embedding AI best practices into your daily workflow.
  • A product builder who understands customers deeply, helps shape what gets built, and turns ambiguous business problems into clear product and technical direction.
  • Strong collaboration, mentorship, and leadership: a compelling vision, clear communication, and the ability to drive concurrent projects and influence strategy with a collaborative leadership style.

Nice to have:

  • Experience with cross-platform development.
  • Prior experience building or operating creative serving infrastructure for digital advertising, especially for new and rich ad formats (e.g., video or interactive creative).
  • Experience with machine learning and gen-AI in advertising, such as ranking, retrieval, and optimization.

Technologies we use and teach:

  • Backend: Kotlin, Java 16, Hibernate, Guice, Jersey
  • Search and data: Elasticsearch, FAISS, Redis, DynamoDB
  • Communication: Protocol Buffers, HTTP, JSON
  • Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Buildkite, Datadog
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)

Skills Required

  • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • 3+ years as a technical leader driving complex, cross-team projects
  • Deep expertise building and scaling ad formats or similar user-facing content delivery systems
  • Proven track record of leading and operating highly available, high-performance, low-latency backend systems at scale
  • Excellent programming and system design skills
  • AI-native; use modern AI tooling and embed AI best practices into workflow
  • Product builder mindset: translate ambiguous business problems into product and technical direction
  • Strong collaboration, mentorship, and leadership skills
  • Experience with cross-platform development
  • Prior experience building or operating creative serving infrastructure for digital advertising (video/interactive creative)
  • Experience with machine learning and generative AI in advertising (ranking, retrieval, optimization)

Faire Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Faire and has not been reviewed or approved by Faire.

  • Healthcare Strength Healthcare coverage is positioned as comprehensive across medical, dental, and vision, with dental preventative care covered at 100% and disability coverage described as fully covered. Mental health support is treated as a core benefit through therapy/coaching access and tools such as Headspace.
  • Leave & Time Off Breadth Time off is framed as generous through paid vacation, holidays, and company-wide PTO days (“Faire Fundays”), with multiple mentions of unlimited or flexible PTO language. Remote/hybrid flexibility is also repeatedly presented as a meaningful part of the overall rewards experience.
  • Parental & Family Support Parental leave is characterized as generous, and fertility support is explicitly included in the benefits package. Family-oriented community support is reinforced through a dedicated parent ERG (“Fairents”).

Faire Insights

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The Company
HQ: San Francisco, CA
1,200 Employees
Year Founded: 2017

What We Do

Faire is an online wholesale marketplace built on the belief that the future is local — there are over 2 million independent retailers in North America and Europe doing more than $2 trillion in revenue. 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 that small businesses everywhere can compete with these big box and e-commerce giants. By supporting the growth of independent businesses, Faire is driving positive economic impact in local communities, globally. We’re looking for smart, resourceful and passionate people to join us as we power the shop local movement.

Why Work With Us

Faire is being built for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. Our customers are at the heart of every decision we make, and we are motivated by the impact we have on local economies and communities around the world. If you believe in community, come join ours.

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