Machine Learning Engineer, Growth

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.

Responsibilities

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 ML lifecycle. Build and own data pipelines, feature engineering, model training, deployment, and online experimentation. Build feedback loops from postbacks, conversions, and downstream revenue signals; 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.

Requirements

5+ 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.

Nice to have

Experience building ML applications in E-commerce or Social products; Prior experience in growth domains: user segmentation, retention modeling, large scale recommendation systems, notification ranking, etc.

Benefits

Flexible Time off Policy and Company-wide Holidays (including a spring and winter break); Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision; Work From Home Support; Home office setup allowance; Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet; Care benefits; Monthly allowance for wellness; Annual allowance towards Childcare; Lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses; Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally; Monthly allowance to dogfood the app; Parental Leave: 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work