Machine Learning Platform Engineer

Whatnot; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 245,000 - 345,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance options

Work From Home Support

Home office setup allowance

Monthly cell phone/internet allowance

Parental Leave

401k employer match up to 4%

Pension plans internationally

Dogfood the app

Job summary

Whatnot is hiring an AI/ML Platform Engineer to design and scale the core infrastructure powering ML and self-hosted model deployments. You will work with ML scientists to bring cutting-edge models into production and enable scalable, low-latency serving and training across the platform.

You will prototype and productionalize ML architectures, build GPU-enabled pipelines, and extend inference and training systems as the company grows its AI capabilities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a technical field.
• 3+ years building production systems for consumer-scale loads.
• 1+ year Python development in production.
• Ability to work remotely and drive initiatives.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis.
• Familiarity with Datadog and Grafana for monitoring.
• Experience with AWS services and data pipelines.
• Strong documentation and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Own infrastructure powering AI/ML models across critical business surfaces.
• Prototype, deploy, and productionalize novel ML architectures.
• Design and scale inference infrastructure with low latency and high throughput.
• Build distributed training and inference pipelines using GPUs.
• Take on new technical challenges as we scale AI across Whatnot’s ecosystem.

Skills

Python programming

Production systems

Remote collaboration

Documentation

Communication skills

Autonomous work

GPU/ML inference

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/Statistics/Math or related field

Tools

PostgreSQL

DynamoDB

Elasticsearch

Redis

DataDog

Grafana

AWS SageMaker

Lambda

Kinesis

S3

EC2

EKS/ECS

Apache Kafka

Flink

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'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 looking for builders–intellectually curious, highly entrepreneurial engineers eager to shape the future of AI and ML at Whatnot. You’ll design and scale the core infrastructure that powers machine learning and self-hosted large language model applications across the company, working side by side with machine learning scientists to bring cutting‑edge models into production and unlock entirely new product experiences. This means building systems that make advanced ML dependable and fast at scale–from low‑latency, large model serving to distributed training & high‑throughput GPU inference.

What you'll do:

• Own the infrastructure powering AI and ML models across critical business surfaces–supporting growth, recommendations, trust and safety, fraud, seller tooling, and more.

• Prototype, deploy, and productionalize novel ML architectures that directly shape user experience and marketplace dynamics.

• Design and scale inference infrastructure capable of serving large models with low latency and high throughput.

• Build distributed training and inference pipelines leveraging GPUs and both model and data parallelism.

• Stretch beyond your comfort zone to take on new technical challenges as we scale AI across Whatnot’s ecosystem.

US Based: 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, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco hubs.

You

Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that low ego, a growth mindset, and leaning into action and high impact goes a long way here.

As our next AI/ML Platform Engineer you should have 4+ years of professional experience developing machine learning systems and algorithms, plus:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics or a related technical field, or equivalent work experience.

• 3+ years of software engineering experience building and maintaining production systems for consumer‑scale loads.

• 1+ years of professional experience developing software in Python.

• Ability to work autonomously and drive initiatives across multiple product areas and communicate findings with leadership and product teams.

• Experience with operational, search, and key‑value databases such as PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis.

• Firm grasp of visualization tools for monitoring and logging e.g. DataDog, Grafana.

• Familiarity with cloud computing platforms and managed services such as AWS Sagemaker, Lambda, Kinesis, S3, EC2, EKS/ECS, Apache Kafka, Flink.

• Professionalism around collaborating in a remote working environment and well tested, reproducible work.

• Exceptional documentation and communication skills.

Compensation

For US-based applicants: $245,000 - $345,000/year + benefits + stock options

The salary range may be inclusive of several levels that would be applicable to the position. Final salary will be based on a number of factors including, level, relevant prior experience, skills and expertise. This range is only inclusive of base salary, not benefits (more details below) or equity in the form of stock options.

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.

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.