Senior Software Engineer

Role

We're hiring Senior Software Engineers across multiple engineering pillars at Whatnot — including Buyer Growth, Seller Growth, Trust & Risk, Discovery & Personalization, Search, Customer Experience, and Core Infrastructure. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll own the design and delivery of complex product and platform systems that power one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world. You'll partner closely with Product, Design, Data, and Engineering to turn ambiguous problems into scalable solutions that create meaningful impact for millions of buyers and sellers.

What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate scalable distributed systems that power core marketplace experiences.
• Own complex technical projects from inception through production, balancing speed, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Break down ambiguous product and platform problems into clear technical solutions and drive them to completion.
• Lead the engineering execution of projects, coordinating with multiple engineers and cross-functional partners to deliver high-impact outcomes.
• Make pragmatic technical decisions that enable the team to move quickly while building for long-term scale.
• Continuously identify opportunities to improve developer velocity, system reliability, and customer experience.

You

• People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building.
• You likely have 5+ years of full-time software engineering experience, ideally in high-growth technology companies.
• You have experience building and operating scalable backend or full-stack systems in production.
• You have a track record of independently owning complex technical projects from design through launch.
• You have experience breaking down ambiguous product or platform problems into practical technical solutions.
• You have strong system design skills and experience building reliable, maintainable distributed systems.
• You have the ability to lead engineering execution for initiatives involving multiple engineers while partnering effectively with Product, Design, Data Science, and other cross-functional teams.
• You have a strong bias toward action—you move with urgency, make thoughtful trade-offs, and consistently deliver high-impact work.
• You have excellent product instincts. You prioritize customer and business impact and can clearly articulate why the work you're doing matters.
• You have the ability to solve new and unfamiliar technical challenges with a high degree of autonomy.
• You have a track record of mentoring teammates and contributing to a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture.

Technical Environment

• We primarily use Python, Elixir, and JavaScript across backend and frontend systems, with infrastructure powered by modern cloud and data platforms.

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 to dogfood the app
• All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!)
• Parental Leave
• Compensation Range: $207K - $230K