Join Whatnot as a Staff Software Engineer, a technical leadership role where you'll help build the distributed systems powering one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world. You'll operate as a leader within and across teams, partnering with cross-functional partners to define architectures and drive large initiatives.
What You'll Do
- Lead the design and evolution of large, distributed systems that power live auctions, payments, search, recommendations, trust systems, growth funnels, and more.
- Own ambiguous, high-leverage technical problems from inception to production and set the long-term architectural direction.
- Act as the technical lead for major initiatives, driving alignment across multiple teams without formal management authority.
- Balance urgency and technical excellence, making principled trade-offs that unlock rapid iteration without sacrificing long-term scalability.
- Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentorship, and hands-on contributions to critical systems.
- Partner with leadership to identify the highest-impact investments for scaling reliability, performance, and developer velocity.
- Help Whatnot scale through its next phase of hypergrowth, ensuring our systems remain resilient as we expand globally.
What We're Looking For
- 8+ years of full-time software engineering experience, including experience at high-growth technology companies that saw significant year-over-year user or revenue growth.
- A proven track record of leading large technical initiatives in fast-scaling environments.
- Experience designing and evolving distributed systems at scale such as service-oriented architectures, event-driven systems, real-time systems, high-throughput APIs, and data pipelines.
- A strong foundation in backend and frontend development, comfortable moving between layers and integrating systems end-to-end.
- A strong sense of urgency and ownership.
- Demonstrated ability to act as the technical lead of a team or initiative without direct people management responsibility.
- Experience influencing architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams.
- Excellent product instincts.
- The ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, defining problems clearly and bringing structure to complex spaces.
- A track record of mentoring engineers and elevating engineering quality through design rigor and thoughtful feedback.
Technical Stack
- Python
- Elixir
- JavaScript
Team & Environment
You'll be part of multiple engineering pillars including Buyer Growth, Seller Growth, Trust & Risk, Discovery & Personalization, Search, AI Developer Tools, and Customer Experience. Our culture values low ego, a growth mindset, and leaning into action and high impact.
Benefits & Compensation
- Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
- Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision
- Work From Home Support: Home office setup allowance, Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet
- Care benefits: Monthly allowance for wellness, Annual allowance towards Childcare, Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
- Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally
- Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
- Parental Leave: 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work
Work Mode
This is a hybrid role open to candidates in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law.
