Software Engineer, Whatnot
AI Dev Tools
$195-290k
+ Offers Equity
Live stream platform & marketplace
Open for applications
Live stream platform & marketplace
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$195-290k
+ Offers Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.
Role
Who you are
- Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that embodying a low ego, growth mindset, and high-impact drive goes a long way here
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and shipping production systems. You're a software engineer first—backend-leaning is fine, but you're comfortable getting around a frontend codebase too, and ideally have enough breadth across different stacks to understand what good tooling looks like beyond your home turf
- A genuine developer tooling enthusiast who's built or improved internal tools, obsessed over local dev ergonomics, or contributed to platform infrastructure—and ideally owned some of it in production. You see AI not just as autocomplete, but as a catalyst for reimagining how developers interact with their environments, codebases, and workflows
- Deeply familiar with the current generation of AI coding tools—Claude Code (strongly preferred), Cursor, Codex, or similar—and use them to get real work done. You have strong opinions about where this space is heading and don't need to chase every new release to stay effective
- Strong product thinking—you can translate ambiguous problem spaces into concrete plans and prioritize across competing initiatives. You’re comfortable writing a technical design doc and can clearly communicate what you’re building and why to people outside your team
- Clear communicator who adapts naturally to your audience—whether that’s pairing with a staff engineer on an integration, onboarding a PM onto an AI workflow, or fielding questions from our VP of Engineering or CPO. The people you work with will span the full spectrum of technical ability
- Bonus: experience with agent sandboxing, containerized execution environments, multi-agent orchestration, LLM APIs and observability, prompt engineering at scale, or enabling non-technical users to leverage AI-powered workflows
What the job involves
- We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Developer Tools team and be a primary contributor of our AI Tooling work end-to-end
- In this role, you will build and own the AI tooling that shapes how Whatnot’s engineering organization—and increasingly, non-engineering teams—write code, ship software, and operate systems faster and more effectively
- This is not a machine learning or data science role
- You won’t be training models—you’ll be building the tooling, infrastructure, and workflows that allow AI coding agents and assistants to operate effectively within Whatnot’s codebase and processes
- You should be deeply familiar with the current generation of AI development tools, especially tools provided by the big 3 LLM companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) and have broad knowledge of other AI and LLM products and services
- Critically, you must be a strong software engineer first
- You’ll serve as the primary interface between the Developer Tools team and Whatnot’s AI Tooling Working Group—a cross-functional community group that tracks the bleeding-edge frontier of AI tooling
- You’ll gather feedback, identify high-impact opportunities, and feed that context into the team’s roadmap and build priorities
- Building and shipping AI tooling across the full spectrum—from near-term developer productivity wins to long-term autonomous agent capabilities—while helping shape what we prioritize next based on what you see working (and not working) on the ground
- Designing and building sandboxed, containerized environments where AI agents can operate autonomously—running code, executing tests, and iterating on solutions with appropriate guardrails
- Building multi-agent orchestration systems and workflows, including CI-fixing agents, SRE context agents, and other autonomous AI capabilities that reduce toil and accelerate delivery
- Enabling non-engineers (PMs, designers, operations) to leverage AI tools effectively through purpose-built workflows, onboarding experiences, and low-code/no-code interfaces
- Building and optimizing AI-aware developer infrastructure: CLAUDE.md configurations, MCP servers, prompt engineering frameworks, and context management systems that make AI assistants more effective in our codebase
- Deploying, monitoring, and maintaining the infrastructure supporting AI tools and workflows to ensure high availability, performance, and reliability for the organization
- Evaluating and integrating emerging AI tools and platforms as the landscape evolves—staying ahead of the curve and bringing the best of the ecosystem into Whatnot
- This is a high-visibility, high-autonomy role. You'll have significant ownership over a space that is evolving rapidly, is a top strategic priority for Whatnot's engineering leadership, and directly shapes how our engineers work every day
Our take
Live shopping is changing the way people engage with eCommerce and Whatnot is one of the key platforms driving this shift. The company operates across the US, UK, and Europe, where millions of people connect each day to buy, sell, and build communities around shared interests.
Founded in 2019, Whatnot allows real-time auctions where buyers can watch sellers showcase products and share their expertise, creating a more interactive and personal shopper experience. Sellers include individual creators and small businesses who use live shows to reach audiences and grow their online presence.
As of 2025, the company reports over $6B in sales, with sellers earning significantly more on average than other major marketplaces. And with a range of investor support, Whatnot is committed to developing new ways to make online shopping more social and community-driven.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Meet the team
Jon Malkemus, VP Product Design
Insights
54% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Oct 2025
$225m
SERIES F
Jan 2025
$265m
SERIES E
Total funding: $974.2m
Company benefits
- Wellness: Health, dental, vision, and life insurance plans. We also cover some of the cost for your dependents as well.
- Compensation: Generous compensation, including a competitive base salary and equity. Whatnot offers monthly reimbursement for internet and phone costs, along with a one-time home office set-up allowance. Whatnot offers a pension plan and matches employee contributions of up to 4% of the employee’s base salary.
- Recharge: Whatnot gives you the freedom to take time off as you see fit. And, we take company-wide Winter and Summer breaks so we can recharge. Whatnot provides a monthly allowance for wellness expenses. We know that to take care of our customers, we have to take care of ourselves. Supplemental health and life insurance coverage comes standard at Whatnot. 16 weeks of paid parental leave, and an additional one-month gradual return-to-work period.* Plus an additional childcare allowance, and a lifetime allowance for family planning, including adoption and fertility expenses. *The leave allowances provided by Whatnot may be dictated / informed by your country’s legal requirements,
- Flexibility: As a remote co-located team, we’re inspired by innovation and anchored in our values. With hubs in the US, UK, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, we’re building the future of online marketplaces –together.
Company values
- Always listen to customers
- Move uncomfortably fast
- Prioritize impact ruthlessly
- Own everything and nothing
- Set crazy goals
- Provide extreme transparency
- Optimize for the upside
- Team over ego
- Figure it out
- Deeply understand why
- Have fun & be kind
Company HQ
Venice, Los Angeles, CA
Articles
Leadership
Grant LaFontaine
(Co-Founder & CEO)Former Product Marketing Manager at Google, Project Manager at Facebook. Also co-founded Kit.
Logan Head
(Co-Founder & CTO)Experience in Engineering, including at Maker's Row, Factr, and Flight Club. Former Senior Product Manager at GOAT.
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