Staff Software Engineer

Whatnot; United States; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Work From Home Support

Parental Leave

Retirement plans (401k)

Dogfood stipend

Job summary

Whatnot, a leading live commerce platform, is hiring Staff Software Engineers across multiple pillars. You will design and own large, distributed systems powering live auctions, payments, search, and recommendations.

You’ll lead initiatives and shape long-term architecture while mentoring engineers and driving rapid, high-impact delivery. You will collaborate with product, data, design, and leadership to align on technical direction, balance speed with quality, and scale our platform for

Qualifications

• 8+ years of full-time software engineering experience.
• Led large technical initiatives in fast-scaling environments.
• Experience designing and evolving distributed systems at scale.
• Strong foundation in backend and frontend development across multiple languages.
• Ability to act as technical lead without direct people management.
• Experience influencing architecture and technical strategy across teams.
• Excellent product instincts.
• Ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, defining problems clearly.
• Mentoring engineers and elevating engineering quality.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of large distributed systems powering 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 for rapid iteration and long-term scalability.
• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentorship, and hands-on contributions to critical systems.
• Partner with leadership to identify high-impact investments for scaling reliability and performance.
• Help Whatnot scale through hypergrowth, ensuring system resilience as we expand globally.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Leadership of large initiatives

Backend and frontend development

Python

Elixir

JavaScript

Tools

Python

Elixir

JavaScript

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 hiring Staff Software Engineers across multiple engineering pillars at Whatnot — including Buyer Growth, Seller Growth, Trust & Risk, Discovery & Personalization, Search, AI Developer Tools, and Customer Experience.

As a Staff Engineer at Whatnot, you will operate as a technical leader within and across teams. You’ll partner with Engineering, Product, Data, Design, and Leadership to define architectures, drive large cross-functional initiatives, and build the distributed systems that power one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world.

This is a high-impact role for engineers who thrive in fast-moving environments and want to shape systems that directly influence millions of buyers and sellers.

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.

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 Los Angeles, New York City, 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.

As our next Staff Software Engineer, you likely have:

• 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, data pipelines.

• A strong foundation in backend and frontend development. You’re comfortable moving between layers and integrating systems end‑to‑end across a variety of languages and technologies (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript).

• A strong sense of urgency and ownership. You move quickly, unblock teams, and know when to dive deep versus drive alignment.

• 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. You understand how technical decisions translate into user and business impact.

• 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.

Benefits

• Generous Holiday and Time off Policy

• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision

• Work From Home Support

• Care benefits

• 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

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.