Staff Security Engineer, Whatnot
Payments
Live stream platform & marketplace
Be an early applicant
Live stream platform & marketplace
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
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
- We value deep payments security expertise and relevant certifications
- 8+ years (for Staff) or 10+ years (for Senior Staff) of backend/distributed systems engineering experience
- Strong security experience across multiple roles. Scar tissue hardening end-to-end business flows and ensuring zero-access principles to any function
- Strong mastery of distributed systems fundamentals: consensus, partitioning, replication, coordination, sharding, state management, etc
- Deep experience with high-throughput, low-latency services and stream processing (e.g., Kafka, Flink, etc.)
- Strong software design, algorithmic, and data-structure skills
- Proficiency in one or more languages (e.g., Python, Go) and scripting
- Proven track record of leading security and scaling core systems under high load, especially in core commerce and payments systems
- Excellent communication skills, ability to influence cross-organizational stakeholders
- Proven track record of delivering features end-to-end and can ship products and features lightning-fast without sacrificing quality
- Strong ownership instincts — capable of driving projects from inception to production and beyond
- The ability to pick up on new technologies very quickly
- Startup experience at a high-growth company — working in fast-paced, rapidly evolving product environments with frequent experimentation (nice to have)
What the job involves
- Payments & Orders at Whatnot build and operate our tier‑0 commerce platforms, powering the full lifecycle of every transaction—from secure pay‑ins and resilient order creation to refunds, ledgering, payouts, and customer‑facing financial reporting—while guaranteeing both financial and referential integrity end‑to‑end
- We take a platform‑first approach, providing reusable primitives and APIs for Payment Methods, Orders, Transactions, Payouts, Incentives, and Tax that enable product teams to ship reliably at scale across markets and payment methods, while managing an ever‑growing multi‑billion‑dollar flow of funds across multiple international markets
- You’ll partner with core feature teams and the CISO/Security org to drive a rigorous, defense‑in‑depth posture and uphold our high bar for reliability, risk, and compliance
- You’ll own meaningful areas, advance the domain in collaboration with leadership, and exercise strong trade‑off judgment and clear communication
- Architect, design and build high-throughput, low-latency solutions for securing the entire financial stack of the business, end to end
- Define and enforce rigorous security patterns, service contracts, fault-isolation across teams that build on top of the Payments Foundation stack
- Mentor and guide senior engineers, lead code reviews, design reviews, and promote best practices in system design, testing, observability, and deployment
- Participate in incident response, root-cause analysis, and post-mortem processes for critical system failures
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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