Software Engineer, Whatnot

2025 New Grad

$130-140k

+ Equity

Entry level
Los Angeles
New York
San Francisco Bay Area
Whatnot

Live stream platform & marketplace for collectibles

Open for applications

Whatnot

Live stream platform & marketplace for collectibles

501-1000 employees

B2CMarketplaceToysSocialSocial MediaConsumer Goods

Open for applications

$130-140k

+ Equity

Entry level
Los Angeles
New York
San Francisco Bay Area

501-1000 employees

B2CMarketplaceToysSocialSocial MediaConsumer Goods

Company mission

Whatnot missions is to enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

Role

Who you are

  • The most important skills you’ll need to have are making sound product decisions and shipping high-quality products fast
  • We look for engineers with great product instincts who can own whole projects from start to finish
  • The engineering team operates with a high level of autonomy so we need to hire people we can trust
  • Your ability to make good trade-offs and exercise good judgment is essential to us
  • Team members in this role are required to be within commuting distance of our New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco hubs
  • As our next Engineer you should have some industry software engineering experience
  • Graduating with a CS or Software Engineering degree in Dec 2024 or by Summer 2025
  • Problem solver and out-of-the-box thinker
  • Willing to take risks and build product and systems for 1M+ users
  • Capable of building scalable systems
  • Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution
  • You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast
  • Ability to pick up on new technologies very quickly
  • Open to relocation to SF, LA, or NYC

What the job involves

  • We are looking for intellectually curious, highly motivated individuals to join us post grad in 2025
  • Building new features for users in our live-streams
  • Implementing growth tactics and strategies to scale our buyer and seller flows
  • Building systems at scale that help us deliver a high trust marketplace experience
  • Writing product or system development code
  • Designing, implementing, and operating our most critical and scalable services
  • Carefully evaluating the technical tradeoffs of every decision
  • Supporting features at every phase, from design through implementation and launch
  • Triage product or system issues and debug/track/resolve by analyzing the sources of issues, network, or service operations and quality

Our take

The collectible toy market is large, and Whatnot has built a unique social platform that enables sellers to use livestreams to showcase their products and reach more buyers. The company’s focus is on collectible toys, some of which are rare and can cost thousands of dollars, and has also expanded to sports cards.

The idea of Whatnot was led by buyer trends. Instagram's live feature became a popular place for selling toys and trading cards, but of course was not set up to facilitate bidding or handling payments after a sale occurs. Whatnot combines live showcasing with follow-up sale capabilities, thus serving the community in a more novel way than established collectibles market players such as eBay.

The company has grown fast. It was established in 2019 and has already expanded from its original category - Funko Pop figurines - to Pokemon cards, pins, sports cards, and many more. There is still plenty of scope for expanding into new categories, as the company aims to establish itself as the go-to for this large niche, which will be facilitated by the strong levels of funding that Whatnot has raised.

Steph headshot

Steph

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

Some candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

54% employee growth in 12 months

Company

Employee endorsements

Hard working team

"Everyone here puts in the work. It's refreshing to work on a team where everyone is carrying their weight and lifting each other up. The work ethic..."

Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)

Jul 2022

$260m

SERIES D

Sep 2021

$150m

SERIES C

Total funding: $484.2m

Company benefits

  • Wellness: Health, dental, vision, and life insurance plans. We also cover some of the cost for your dependents as well.
  • Compensation: Full-time Whatnauts receive equity, a WFH stipend to support your remote workspace and a monthly stipend to dogfood the app.
  • Recharge: Flexible Time Off policy, holiday week off at the end of year, and paid parental leave after 1 year with us.
  • Flexibility: Remote-first work culture. We provide a working environment where you're in charge of your time and schedule.

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 nice

Company HQ

Marina del Rey, CA

Leadership

Grant LaFontaine

(Co-Founder & CEO)

Former Product Marketing Manager at Google, Project Manager at Facebook. Also co-founded Kit.

Logan Head

(Co-Founder)

Experience in Engineering, including at Maker's Row, Factr, and Flight Club. Former Senior Product Manager at GOAT.

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