Staff Security Engineer - Bot & Traffic Defence

About the Position

We are looking for a Staff Security Engineer - Bot & Traffic Defence to join our team in San Francisco, CA. At Faire, we believe in the power of local businesses and are dedicated to connecting independent retailers with the best products from around the world. Our Engineering organization is responsible for the software that powers our marketplace, and we are seeking a passionate and experienced security engineer to help us defend against automated threats.

Responsibilities

As a Staff Security Engineer, Bot & Traffic Defence, you will:

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for bot, scraping, and application-layer DDoS defence end to end.
• Author and tune edge security controls as code: WAF rules, rate limiting policies, and challenge mechanisms.
• Build higher-confidence bot and trust signals.
• Design and operate distributed layer 7 rate limiting.
• Make incident response for bot and DDoS events a solved problem.
• Lead post-incident reviews on recurring classes of bot incidents.
• Build the tooling, secure defaults, and playbooks that let service-owning teams protect their own endpoints.
• Establish a durable ownership model across Security, Platform, service teams, and Anti-Abuse.
• Make Faire's bot posture legible to leadership and force the outstanding business decisions.

Requirements

• Hands-on operational ownership of a CDN or edge security platform in production against real adversaries.
• Experience defending a high-traffic consumer site against scraping and application-layer DDoS.
• Practical understanding of bot detection signals and their trade-offs.
• Experience designing distributed rate limiting at layer 7.
• Quantitative rigour in detection work.
• Preference for solving traffic and abuse problems with code.
• Comfort writing and reviewing code in Kotlin, Java, Python, or TypeScript.
• Working fluency with infrastructure as code and cloud environments (Terraform, AWS or GCP, Kubernetes).
• Experience owning incident response for a live traffic attack.
• Track record of setting technical direction in an ambiguous domain.
• Experience landing a cross-team ownership model without authority.
• Ability to put security risk in business terms for executives.
• Clear communication with engineers outside security.

Technologies

• Languages: Kotlin, Typescript, Python
• Tools: WAF, rate limiting, bot management, challenge policies
• Infrastructure: AWS, OCI, Terraform, Kubernetes
• Protocols: HTTP, JSON, Protocol Buffers

We Offer

• Competitive Salary: $231,000 to $318,000 per year in San Francisco.
• Equity and Benefits: Eligible for equity and comprehensive benefits.
• Hybrid Work Model: 3 days in-office (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and a flex day) and remote work flexibility.
• Career Growth: Opportunities to move fast and see your results.
• Collaborative Environment: Work with a team of sharp, kind, and generous colleagues.
• Real Rewards: Competitive pay, equity, and comprehensive benefits.

About the Company

Faire is a technology wholesale platform built on the belief that the future is local. We connect independent retailers with the best products from around the world, using the power of tech, data, and machine learning. Founded in 2017, we are backed by top investors and have a global presence across offices in Toronto, London, and New York.

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. We are committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities.

For more information about Faire and our customers, you can read more on our blog.

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.