Base Salary
$230k - $290k/yr
Responsibilities
- Set technical direction and lead architecture for the next generation of customer experience systems.
- Build safe, measurable, configurable, observable, and testable AI-assisted support and automation systems.
- Improve support intake, routing, conversation connectivity, seller support, refunds, returns, and CX workflows.
- Lead initiatives from problem discovery and technical design through launch, measurement, reliability, and iteration.
- Collaborate across CX, Product, Operations, AI, Payments, Logistics, Trust, and engineering teams.
- Make pragmatic tradeoffs among customer experience, support quality, cost, trust, speed, and long-term platform health.
- Raise engineering quality through design reviews, mentorship, clear communication, and technical leadership.
Requirements
- 9+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership on complex backend systems.
- Meaningful experience building customer support, service, marketplace post-purchase, or other operationally complex customer-facing systems.
- Track record designing, building, and operating reliable, high-scale backend services and end-to-end product experiences.
- Ability to establish technical strategy, guide architecture, and evolve legacy systems while maintaining product delivery.
- Experience leading initiatives across organizational boundaries with ownership of discovery, design, launch, measurement, reliability, and iteration.
- Strong product and operational judgment, including the ability to translate customer and business needs into pragmatic technical solutions.
- Experience building observable systems with safe change, testing, recoverable workflows, and clear ownership.
- Ability to provide staff-level technical leadership through design reviews, mentorship, alignment, and decision-making in ambiguity.
- Experience with Python, Elixir, and/or Postgres is useful.
- Collaborative, inclusive, supportive, low-ego, and growth-oriented working style.
Benefits
- Generous holiday and time-off policy.
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance options.
- Work-from-home support, including home office setup and monthly cell phone and internet allowances.
- Care benefits, including monthly wellness and annual childcare allowances and a lifetime family-planning benefit.
- 401(k) traditional and Roth plans in the US with employer matching up to 4% of base salary, plus international pension plans.
- Monthly allowance to use Whatnot as both a buyer and seller.
- 16 weeks of paid parental leave plus one month of gradual return to work, subject to applicable country leave requirements.
- Role based near a Whatnot hub in San Francisco, New York City, or Seattle; the company operates as a remote co-located team.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Whatnot
Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in the US, UK, and Europe. Millions of people come to Whatnot every day to buy, sell, and connect over the things they love, from sneakers to sports cards, vintage fashion to fine jewelry, comics to Pokémon, beauty, electronics, and hundreds of other categories. In 2025, live sales on Whatnot surpassed $8B, more than doubling the year before. Over 20 million accounts were created last year alone, and we have been the #1 shopping app in both the US and UK. We've built a real business, but we're nowhere near done. Live commerce at this scale has never been done in the West, which means the people here now are shaping how an entirely new industry develops. The pace here is fast and the expectations are high. We move quickly, prioritize ruthlessly, and trust people to own their work end-to-end. In return, careers grow faster, impact is real, and your colleagues will raise your standards. It's an environment built for people who want to do the best work of their careers alongside others doing the same. We're a remote, co-located team with hubs in the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, and Germany, and we're hiring across every function.