Machine Learning Engineer, Whatnot
Fraud
$245-345k
Offers Equity
More information about location
Live stream platform & marketplace
Posted today
Live stream platform & marketplace
1001+ employees
Posted today
$245-345k
Offers Equity
More information about location
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
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience
- 2–6 years of experience in machine learning or software engineering, ideally in risk, fraud, or trust & safety domains
- Strong proficiency in Python and ML libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, PyTorch, LightGBM)
- Solid backend development skills and experience deploying ML models to production (batch or real-time)
- Experience in data analysis and ETL (SQL, Spark, DBT) for data pipeline building
- Familiarity with fraud detection techniques such as chargeback prediction, anomaly detection, or graph-based modeling
- Experience with data orchestration frameworks (Dagster, Kubeflow) and feature store design
- Ability to translate business risk into measurable ML solutions and collaborate across diverse
What the job involves
- Design, train, and deploy both traditional ML and LLM-powered models to detect fraudulent behaviors across users, payments, and marketplace interactions
- Lead the end-to-end architecture of fraud detection, prevention, and intervention systems — balancing platform security with a seamless user experience
- Build intelligent user graphs to model behavioral patterns, collusion networks, and account connectivity
- Develop scalable data pipelines and real-time inference systems supporting high-volume, low-latency ML workloads
- Conduct deep behavioral and adversarial data analysis to uncover fraud trends and continuously improve detection accuracy
- Partner cross-functionally with Trust & Safety, Payments, and Infrastructure teams to develop features, labels, and model evaluation pipelines
- Implement model monitoring and drift detection systems to ensure reliability and responsiveness
- Contribute to fraud risk orchestration, combining rules, models, and heuristics for decision automation
- Define and track key metrics and dashboards for fraud detection effectiveness (e.g., precision, recall, false-positive rate, latency)
- Stay ahead of emerging fraud tactics and continuously translate insights into adaptive, production-ready systems
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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