Senior Software Engineer - Growth

Faire; Toronto; On-site; CAD 156,000 - 214,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Equity

Comprehensive benefits

Flexible work

Latest enterprise AI tools

Job summary

Faire in Toronto, Canada is looking for a Senior Growth Platform Engineer to design and build scalable backend systems for experimentation and growth. This role aims to enhance the retailer journey through effective backend architecture and infrastructure. Candidates should have 5+ years of experience in backend software engineering, with a strong command over technologies like Kotlin and Java. The salary range for this position is between $156,000 and $214,500 per year, complemented by equity and comprehensive benefits.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Strong experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Experience building or contributing to experimentation platforms.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable backend systems for experimentation.
• Design growth infrastructure for product teams.
• Build APIs and services for personalization and workflows.

Skills

Backend software engineering experience

Distributed systems

Kotlin

Java

API design

Relational databases

Event-driven architectures

Performance

Tools

AWS

Docker

MySQL

CockroachDB

Job description

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 This Role

At Faire we have a business unit focused on Retailer Growth that oversees core growth strategies from top of funnel, to onboarding, to helping Retailers get up and running to be successful on Faire. As our Growth organization scales, the complexity of experimentation, segmentation, targeting, personalization, and lifecycle orchestration increases dramatically. We are investing in platform capabilities that empower multiple product teams to move faster and run higher‑quality experiments safely at scale. We are looking for a Senior Growth Platform Engineer to design and build the foundational systems that power growth across Faire. This role focuses on backend systems that enable experimentation, targeting, incentives, lifecycle triggers, and growth automation across the retailer journey.

What You’ll Do

• Architect and build scalable backend systems that power experimentation, segmentation, and targeting.
• Design growth infrastructure that enables product teams to ship experiments safely and independently.
• Build APIs and services that support personalization, incentives, lifecycle triggers, and growth workflows.
• Partner with Data Science and Analytics to ensure accurate experiment assignment, event tracking, and metric integrity.
• Improve experimentation velocity by reducing friction in tooling, deployment, and analysis.
• Ensure systems are reliable, observable, secure, and capable of operating at marketplace scale.
• Establish best practices for experimentation guardrails, traffic allocation, and statistical integrity.
• Influence technical direction across the Growth organization through platform design and architectural leadership.

We’re Excited About You Because You

• Have 5+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Have strong experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale.
• Have built or significantly contributed to experimentation platforms, or growth infrastructure.
• Are fluent in backend technologies such as Kotlin, Java, or similar JVM‑based systems.
• Have deep experience designing APIs and working with relational databases (e.g., MySQL, CockroachDB).
• Understand event‑driven architectures, data pipelines, and instrumentation best practices.
• Care about system reliability, observability, and performance.
• Think in terms of leverage, building systems that empower many teams rather than solving one‑off problems.
• Can translate ambiguous growth requirements into robust, scalable technical solutions.
• Have strong product instincts and understand how platform decisions impact business outcomes.

Bonus / Nice To Haves

• Experience in marketplace, e‑commerce, or two‑sided platform environments.
• Familiarity with statistical experimentation concepts (power, bias, sample sizing).
• Experience integrating with marketing automation, CRM, or lifecycle systems.
• Exposure to real‑time personalization or recommendation systems.

Technologies We Use & Teach

• Backend: Kotlin, Java, Guice, Jersey, Hibernate
• Datastores: MySQL, CockroachDB
• Infrastructure & Cloud: AWS (EC2, S3, RDS), Docker
• APIs & Data: HTTP, REST, JSON, Protocol Buffers
• Experimentation & Growth: Feature flagging systems, A/B testing frameworks, traffic ramping tools

Salary Range

Canada: the pay range for this role is $156,000 - $214,500 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 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).