Opportunity at
FaireStaff Product Engineer - Search FX (Discovery Experience)
Faire operates a global technology wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with merchants from around the world using data and machine learning. The company aims to…
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About This Role
Faire operates a global technology wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with merchants from around the world using data and machine learning. The company aims to support local storefronts by making product discovery intuitive and efficient. The Discovery Search team, also known as Search FX, shapes how buyers locate merchandise by merging search capabilities, evaluation processes, and personalization into a unified system. As a Staff Product Engineer for Search FX,…
Job Description
Faire operates a global technology wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with merchants from around the world using data and machine learning. The company aims to support local storefronts by making product discovery intuitive and efficient. The Discovery Search team, also known as Search FX, shapes how buyers locate merchandise by merging search capabilities, evaluation processes, and personalization into a unified system.
As a Staff Product Engineer for Search FX, you will act as a primary technical architect for retailer-facing search interfaces. Your responsibilities include shaping the end-to-end architecture for discovery systems, integrating generative artificial intelligence into query processing, scaling infrastructure to handle large product volumes while maintaining low latency, and collaborating with cross-functional groups such as product management, design, and data science. You will also mentor team members to foster technical excellence and ownership.
This position suits a seasoned engineer with extensive software development expertise and a strong interest in modernizing search frameworks through artificial intelligence and high-performance backend infrastructure. The role is on-site and full-time. While specific location details are not listed for all areas, base pay ranges are available for San Francisco and New York, and hybrid employees adhere to a specific in-office schedule.
Responsibilities
- Design the end-to-end architecture for search and discovery experiences to ensure high speed, relevance, and personalization
- Incorporate LLM-powered capabilities like natural language search and intelligent query understanding directly into products
- Construct high-scale, low-latency systems capable of managing millions of products within industry latency targets
- Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and Data Science teams to refine ranking models and user interface elements
- Mentor engineers to foster a culture of technical ownership and raise team expertise
- Lead the creation of composable grids, intent-aware routing, and orchestration layers to combine retrieval and ranking
- Utilize LLMs to update query understanding systems and enhance accuracy for edge cases and long-tail searches
- Build offline pipelines and LLM-driven features like Search Missions to recover failed search sessions
- Partner with client engineers on SDUI and React Server Components to elevate performance and developer speed
- Manage the reliability and observability of the entire search funnel from query planning to real-time monitoring
Requirements
- Bring at least 7 years of professional software development experience
- Possess a minimum of 3 years of technical leadership experience driving complex projects across multiple teams
- Demonstrate strong programming skills in Kotlin or Java
- Have experience working with high-performance backend systems, Protocol Buffers, and MySQL
- Show a user-first mindset with the ability to turn ambiguous business challenges into clear technical plans
- Demonstrate the capacity to shape team strategy without supervision and influence broader organizational roadmaps
Qualifications
- Experience partnering with Data Science to deploy machine learning and generative AI systems for search, ranking, and retrieval
- Domain expertise in traditional, semantic, and hybrid search or query processing frameworks such as Elasticsearch and Lucene
Core Skills
Benefits
- Competitive pay
- Equity eligibility
- Comprehensive benefits designed to support life inside and outside of work
Frequently Asked Questions
Answers are based only on the employer’s listing; where it doesn’t say, neither do we.
What is the employment type for this position?
This is a full-time role.
Is this position remote?
The role is classified as on-site.
What is the salary range for the role?
For San Francisco and New York, the pay range is $231,000 to $318,000 per year, with eligibility for equity and benefits. The posting does not specify salary ranges for other locations.
What experience is required to apply?
Applicants must have 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years in a technical leadership capacity managing complex projects across teams, along with proficiency in Kotlin or Java.
Sample Interview Questions
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