Staff Software Engineer

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. We’re hiring Staff Software Engineers across multiple engineering pillars at Whatnot — including Buyer Growth, Seller Growth, Trust & Risk, Discovery & Personalization, Search, AI Developer Tools, and Customer Experience. As a Staff Engineer at Whatnot, you will operate as a technical leader within and across teams. You’ll partner with Engineering, Product, Data, Design, and Leadership to define architectures, drive large cross-functional initiatives, and build the distributed systems that power one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world.

Responsibilities

Lead the design and evolution of large, distributed systems that power live auctions, payments, search, recommendations, trust systems, growth funnels, and more; Own ambiguous, high-leverage technical problems from inception to production — and set the long-term architectural direction; Act as the technical lead for major initiatives, driving alignment across multiple teams without formal management authority; Balance urgency and technical excellence, making principled trade-offs that unlock rapid iteration without sacrificing long-term scalability; Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, mentorship, and hands-on contributions to critical systems; Partner with leadership to identify the highest-impact investments for scaling reliability, performance, and developer velocity; Help Whatnot scale through its next phase of hypergrowth, ensuring our systems remain resilient as we expand globally.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent practical experience; 8+ years of full-time software engineering experience, including experience at high-growth technology companies that saw significant year-over-year user or revenue growth; A proven track record of leading large technical initiatives in fast-scaling environments; Experience designing and evolving distributed systems at scale such as service-oriented architectures, event-driven systems, real-time systems, high-throughput APIs, data pipelines; A strong foundation in backend and frontend development. You’re comfortable moving between layers and integrating systems end-to-end across a variety of languages and technologies (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript); A strong sense of urgency and ownership. You move quickly, unblock teams, and know when to dive deep versus drive alignment; Demonstrated ability to act as the technical lead of a team or initiative without direct people management responsibility; Experience influencing architecture and technical strategy across multiple teams; Excellent product instincts. You understand how technical decisions translate into user and business impact; The ability to operate effectively in ambiguity, defining problems clearly and bringing structure to complex spaces; A track record of mentoring engineers and elevating engineering quality through design rigor and thoughtful feedback.

Nice to have

Comfortable figuring things out as they go; Biased toward action; Genuinely curious about what they're building; Care more about outcomes than credit; Stay close to the product and the people using it

Benefits

Generous Holiday and Time off Policy; 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 *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence