---
title: 'Staff Applied AI/ML Scientist at Faire'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-applied-ai-ml-scientist-faire-san-francisco-5jzztvhtfrm0'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Staff Applied AI/ML Scientist at Faire

- **Company:** Faire
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-08-25
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://boards.greenhouse.io/faire/jobs/8747498002?gh_jid=8747498002

## 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

Faire leverages the power of machine learning and data insights to revolutionize the wholesale industry, enabling local retailers to compete against giants like Amazon and big box stores. Our highly skilled team of Applied AI/ML Scientists specialize in developing algorithmic solutions for recommender systems, spend optimization, lifetime value (LTV) predictions, and much more. Our ultimate goal is to empower local retail businesses with the tools they need to succeed.

At Faire, the Data team is responsible for creating and maintaining a diverse range of algorithms and models that power our marketplace. We are dedicated to building machine learning models that help our customers thrive.

As an Applied AI/ML Scientist tech lead, you will own vision, strategy, and execution for a set of problems that power Faire's two-sided marketplace, connecting hundreds of thousands of independent brands and retailers. Because our users are businesses, there is a wealth of information about them that ML models can use to personalize their experience, grow their success, and keep the marketplace high quality and trustworthy. You will work across structured and unstructured data using methods that range from personalization and recommendations to causal inference, lifetime-value modeling, information extraction, and LLMs. You will act as a lead across multiple cross-functional workstreams and mentor or manage other scientists on the team.

Our team already includes experienced Data Scientists from Uber, Airbnb, Square, Facebook, and Pinterest. Faire will soon be known as a top destination for Applied AI/ML Scientists, and you will help take us there!

## What you’ll do

- Drive data science vision, strategy, and execution end-to-end, and act as a pod lead across cross-functional workstreams.
- Develop personalized recommendation, retrieval, and ranking models, and build content and retailer-level embeddings to power better discovery and exploration experiences.
- Optimize marketing, acquisition, and incentive spend through targeting and personalization, and use experimentation and causal inference to measure the effectiveness of spend levers.
- Predict lifetime value to prioritize sales and acquisition effort and to personalize the new-user experience, even in a user's first session.
- Improve cold-start recommendations and exploration so that new users and new selection find the right audience quickly.
- Extract insights from internal and external data (e.g. reviews, search behavior, referrals, and third-party sources) to enrich leads and power personalization.
- Use deep learning, multi-modal LLMs, and human-in-the-loop training to understand listings and content, extract structured attributes, and detect issues with high accuracy.
- Build detection, enforcement, and quality systems that reduce bad experiences in the marketplace (e.g. counterfeits, policy violations, poor service quality), using levers such as downranking and human-in-the-loop targeting.
- Re-engage users through personalized marketing and identify gaps and opportunities that drive increased engagement.
- Mentor or manage Senior Applied AI/ML Scientists and Analytics Engineers.
- Solve challenging problems related to a two-sided marketplace.

## Qualifications

- 5+ years of industry experience using machine learning to solve real-world problems.
- Experience with relevant business problems (e-commerce, marketplaces, growth, personalization, incentives, or trust and quality).
- Experience with relevant technical methods (causal inference, predictive/LTV modeling, recommendations, information extraction, entity resolution, and/or deep learning and LLMs).
- Strong programming skills.
- An excitement and willingness to learn new tools and techniques.
- Experience as a tech lead, mentoring other scientists or machine learning engineers, and the ability to set team strategy and lead model development without supervision.
- Strong communication skills and the ability to work in a highly cross-functional team.

Great to Haves:

- Highly recommended: Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Statistics, or related STEM fields.
- Experience as a tech lead manager or people manager of applied ML / data science teams.
- Previous experience in marketplace growth, incentive optimization, or trust and quality for a two-sided platform.
- Previous experience with deep learning or language models.

Salary Range

San Francisco: the pay range for this role is $246,500 to $339,000 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. 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](https://blog.faire.com/).

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://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSczpI9me7nYKhunSC6AlagHKv75LHqfi-Qi2TP_3dpin0Uc9Q/viewform) (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 https://www.faire.com/privacy

## About Faire

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Faire is an online wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with brands to streamline the buying and selling process, empowering local businesses.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series E, $1.7B total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2017
- **Founders**: Max Rhodes (CEO), Daniele Perito (CTO), Marcelo Cortes (COO), and Rekha Srivatsan

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Wholesale Marketplace / E-commerce / Retail Technology
- **Target customers**: B2B – primarily independent retailers (boutiques, grocery stores, gift shops) and brands/manufacturers.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "To empower brands and retailers to strengthen the unique character of local communities."

## Products & Services
- **[Faire Marketplace]**: The core platform is a two-sided wholesale marketplace. Retailers can discover and buy products from thousands of brands with low minimums, net-60 payment terms (60 days to pay, interest-free), and free returns on first orders.
- **[Faire Payments & Invoicing]**: Integrated financial services allowing retailers to buy now and pay invoices 60 days later with zero fees.
- **[Faire for Brands]**: A suite of tools for brands to manage their wholesale operations, get discovered by retailers, and manage orders and payments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: $12.59 billion (as of Series E in 2021, per multiple reports and LinkedIn). Note: This is a private valuation from 2021; current valuation may differ.
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $235M (estimated, per LinkedIn) and Total Funding of $1.7B.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Sequoia Capital (led Series E), Khosla Ventures (led Series A), Forerunner Ventures, DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Y Combinator.
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - Headcount of 927 employees (+8.6% YoY growth).
    - Serving retailers in 70,000+ cities and featuring 100,000+ brands.
    - Named to Forbes "Top Startups of 2025" list.
    - Received Fast Company "Most Innovative Companies" award.
    - Active job postings up +147.4% YoY, signaling strong hiring momentum.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Network Effects**: A powerful two-sided marketplace that becomes more valuable as more retailers and brands join.
- **Financial Moat**: Offering net-60 payment terms is a major differentiator for cash-strapped small retailers, creating stickiness.
- **Data & AI**: Uses AI/ML to power search, recommendations, and pricing, helping retailers discover the right products and brands optimize their offerings.
- **Scale & Brand**: As the leading platform in its space, it has a significant head start over potential competitors.

## Strategic Focus
- **International Expansion**: Offices in Canada, UK, Brazil, Netherlands, and India, with plans to grow.
- **Product Development**: Heavy investment in AI/ML (hiring Applied AI/ML Scientists), product management, and design to improve the platform experience.
- **Deepening the Moat**: Focus on financial services (payments/invoicing) and data insights to become an indispensable operating system for independent retailers.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: The company emphasizes a "high-urgency," "relentlessly resourceful," and "low-ego" culture. Core values include "One Faire" (collaboration), "Make it happen (fast)," "Raise the bar," "Seek the truth," and "Serve our community."
- **Remote/Hybrid/Office Policy**: Hybrid model with thoughtfully designed offices in San Francisco (HQ), New York, Toronto, Waterloo, London, and São Paulo. Monthly stipends for home connectivity needs.
- **Notable Perks**:
    - Comprehensive healthcare (Health, Dental, Vision, Disability).
    - Generous parental and family leave, plus fertility support.
    - "Faire Fundays" (company-wide paid time off).
    - Annual learning grant for personal/professional development + unlimited LinkedIn Learning.
    - Fitness & wellbeing monthly credit.
    - Free access to Modern Health therapists and resources.
    - Charitable donation matching (up to $250/year).
- **Engineering Culture**: Described as tackling complex problems to build "one of the most ambitious technology platforms in retail." Strong emphasis on AI, search, and growth engineering. Many hires come from top tech companies (Google, Amazon, Uber, Shopify, Airbnb).
- **Career Growth**: A career framework is in place to allow employees to grow as leaders, hone their craft, or explore new disciplines.

## Sources
1. [faire.com - About](https://www.faire.com/about)
2. [faire.com - Careers](https://www.faire.com/careers)
3. [faire.com - Homepage](https://www.faire.com/)
4. [LinkedIn - Faire Jobs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/fairewholesale/jobs)
5. [LinkedIn - Faire Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/fairewholesale)

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