Head of Ads Quality Engineering, Whatnot
$230-350k
+ Equity
Live stream platform & marketplace
Posted today
Live stream platform & marketplace
1001+ employees
Posted today
$230-350k
+ 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
- We’ve found that embodying a low ego, growth mindset, and high-impact drive goes a long way here
- M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Economics, Statistics, or equivalent professional experience
- 10+ years of industry experience building and shipping production machine learning systems at scale
- 5+ years of leadership experience managing engineering or analytics teams
- Strong expertise in ML fundamentals: ads system, marketplace incentives systems, ranking systems, recommendation algorithms, retrieval, personalization from ground up
- Experience with large-scale data pipelines, feature engineering, and model serving infrastructure
- Strong communication and collaboration skills; ability to work effectively across product, data, and business teams
- Demonstrated ability to balance innovation with shipping and reliability
- A collaborative mindset — especially with product, data science, and ML counterparts — to drive measurable business outcomes
- Strategic and technical leadership that raises the bar for engineering excellence
- Bonus: Proficiency in Python and/or Scala; familiarity with ML frameworks (e.g PyTorch, XGBoost, etc.)
- 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, San Francisco or Seattle hub
What the job involves
- Ads+Promos is a growing engineering team at Whatnot that is dedicated to building products and systems to help sellers grow their business, stand out in a competitive marketplace and strengthen their brands
- The Ads Quality subteam is responsible for ensuring the most relevant, high-performing ads and promotions reach users across all our ad formats and discovery experiences
- This team owns the retrieval and ranking stages in the ads delivery funnel, balancing relevance for users and ROI for advertisers
- As we expand into new features and ad formats, this team will be critical to maintaining user trust while scaling advertising revenue
- We're seeking an experienced Head of Ads Quality leader to build and lead a world-class team of machine learning and backend engineers
- You'll own the technical strategy for our ads quality systems, developing advanced ML models to surface the most engaging and relevant promoted content
- This is a high-impact role where you'll define the technical direction, mentor exceptional engineers, and work cross-functionally to build the next generation of ads products
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
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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