Engineering Manager

Whatnot; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 245,000 - 330,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off

Health insurance

Work From Home support

Home office setup allowance

Cell phone & internet stipend

Job summary

Whatnot is expanding its engineering leadership team and hiring Engineering Managers across several high-priority areas. You will lead and grow high-performing teams responsible for powering hundreds of millions of orders, enhancing buyer and seller experiences, and sustaining our scalable live marketplace.

As an EM, you’ll own architecture, execution, and mentorship, partner with cross-functional leaders, and drive technical excellence from planning to shipping.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams in high-growth environments.
• Hands-on technical leadership overseeing large-scale distributed systems and web/mobile apps.
• Ability to recruit, mentor, and retain top engineering talent.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow high-performing engineering teams across initiatives.
• Own architecture, execution, and long-term maintainability of systems.
• Partner with cross-functional leaders to deliver impactful products.
• Drive technical excellence and data-informed decision making.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Recruitment & mentoring

System design & architecture

Distributed systems

Data-driven decisions

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Job description

Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.

As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.

We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

Role

We're growing our engineering leadership team at Whatnot and hiring Engineering Managers across several high-priority areas of the business. Following our recent Series G funding and $20B valuation, we're entering an exciting new chapter of growth and looking for leaders who thrive on building high-performing teams, solving complex technical challenges, and shaping the future of live commerce.

As an EM at Whatnot, you'll operate at the intersection of technical complexity, scale, and meaningful product impact. From powering hundreds of millions of orders to building engaging buyer and seller experiences and the foundational infrastructure behind our live marketplace, our teams tackle some of the most exciting challenges in commerce. You'll partner closely with cross-functional leaders, drive technical excellence, and have real ownership over architecture, execution, and growing exceptional engineering teams.

We offer flexibility to work from home or from one of our global office hubs, and we value in-person time for planning, problem-solving, and connection. Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our New York, San Francisco or Seattle hub.

You

People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.

In addition to embodying our cultural principles, great leadership candidates will also have:

• Experience leading engineering teams, supporting career development while delivering results in a high-growth environment.
• Low ego, a builder mindset, and sound judgment when making difficult trade-offs with limited resources.
• Proven ability to recruit, mentor, retain, and develop high-performing engineering teams.
• Hands-on technical leadership experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems and complex web and mobile applications.
• Strong product and design instincts, with an understanding of how user experience and technical architecture work together to deliver great products.
• Comfortable making pragmatic decisions around technical debt and balancing short-term execution with long-term maintainability.
• Experience defining and leveraging product metrics, with a strong understanding of both the value and limitations of data.
• Ability to effectively manage stakeholders, navigate competing priorities, and operate successfully in ambiguous environments.
• Significant hands-on engineering experience in the domain you'll be leading, enabling credibility with technical teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

Benefits

• Flexible Time off Policy and Company-wide Holidays (including a spring and winter break)
• 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
  • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).
• Parental Leave
  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

Please note: Whatnot will only contact you through official @whatnot.com email addresses. If you see an email impersonating a Whatnot recruiter, please disregard and report it as spam.

EOE

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. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.

Compensation Range: $245K - $330K