Software Engineer, Whatnot
Seller Growth
$205-290k
+ Equity
Live stream platform & marketplace
Posted today
Live stream platform & marketplace
1001+ employees
Posted today
$205-290k
+ 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 low ego, a growth mindset, and leaning into action and high impact goes a long way here
- As our next Backend Engineer you should have 5+ years of software engineering experience , plus:
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience
- Experience building scalable systems (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript)
- Ability to work across the stack (backend and frontend)
- Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution
- Proven track record of delivering features. You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast
- Ability to take ownership of an ambiguous area and define and then drive impact
- Ability to flexibly work across multiple workstreams, thriving in a fast-paced environment
- Knowledge of data and growth systems like notifications
- Scalability and data pipeline experience with SQL, dbt, etc
What the job involves
- Seller Growth is responsible for growing sellers on Whatnot — enabling them to turn their hobbies into businesses
- Within Seller Growth, the Platform pod ensures that this growth is sustainable, trustworthy, and scalable
- As our next software engineer on the Seller Growth Platform pod, you will design and build the systems that sit at the heart of the new seller funnel. Your work will focus on:
- Protecting the funnel from fraud and abuse: Developing and scaling systems for identity verification (IDV), fraud detection, and automated trust/risk reviews that safeguard buyers while minimizing friction for good sellers
- Balancing growth with trust and safety: Ensuring that the thousands of new sellers joining weekly can sell successfully without degrading the buyer experience, while preventing bad actors from gaining distribution or abusing incentives
- Building platform intelligence: Powering accurate seller identification (e.g., enrichment data, signals, and predictive LTV models) to route sellers to the right onboarding, incentive, and discovery paths
- Creating scalable infrastructure: Partnering with Data Science and Trust teams to design reusable trust and reputation systems, modular fraud prevention frameworks, and experimentation platforms that other pods and teams across Whatnot can leverage
- Driving long-term seller success: Enabling better bucketing of sellers by value and risk profile, ensuring that high-potential sellers are accelerated early, while low-quality or fraudulent sellers are contained before they reach scale
- This pod works at the intersection of growth, trust, and platform-ization. You’ll be responsible for deeply technical systems (IDV, fraud signal repositories, seller enrichment pipelines, predictive models) that directly influence GMV, seller retention, and buyer trust
- The pace is fast: every week, thousands of sellers apply to sell, and your work ensures that Whatnot can confidently scale this influx without compromising marketplace integrity
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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