Machine Learning Engineer, Whatnot

• 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
• 8+ years of industry experience building and deploying ML systems at scale
• Demonstrated success in leading end-to-end ML projects that drove measurable business outcomes
• Deep expertise in personalization, ranking, or user modeling; strong intuition around user behavior in consumer products
• Advanced proficiency in Python, SQL, and common ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, XGBoost)
• Strong communication and leadership skills; ability to influence roadmap and align cross-functional teams

Desirable

• The Buyer Growth team is responsible for driving Whatnot’s top-of-funnel growth and first-time buyer success. We're looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to accelerate buyer growth at Whatnot through intelligent, data-driven experiences.
• As the first ML engineer, you’ll build and own ML models personalization in onboarding and user targeting in our acquisition and engagement channels. This is a high-impact role on a team directly responsible for growing Whatnot’s buyer base and improving first-time user conversion. In this role, you will
• Lead the design, development, and productionization of ML models that power user acquisition, activation, and retention (e.g., ranking models, targeting systems, uplift modeling)
• Own the full model lifecycle: from data collection and feature engineering to model training, evaluation, deployment, and online experimentation
• Identify and prioritize high-impact opportunities where machine learning can unlock growth, collaborating with product, engineering, data, and marketing stakeholders
• Drive technical excellence and establish ML best practices across the Buyer Growth team
• Team members in this role are required to be within commuting distance of our Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, or New York hubs