Engineering Manager, Backend Platforms

Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. Whether it's trading cards, fashion, electronics, or live plants, our sellers are building real businesses across hundreds of categories. We're building live commerce at a scale that's never been done in the West, and there's no playbook to copy. The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.

As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. We move fast, stay close to our users, and focus on the work that drives the most impact.

We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our news and engineering blogs and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

💻 Role

Whatnot's Backend Platforms team owns the backend that powers live commerce at scale: the Python and Elixir cores, the realtime services behind every livestream and auction, and the storage and database layer the rest of engineering builds on. The work compounds: every improvement to these platforms raises the floor for hundreds of engineers and millions of buyers and sellers.

As a senior leader in our Infrastructure organization, you will own the strategy and execution of Backend Platforms. You will manage senior ICs and, as the team grows, other engineering managers, shaping org structure, developing leaders, and setting strategy across multiple workstreams. You will partner with engineering teams across the company to accelerate delivery and ensure Whatnot's platform scales with the business.

We're looking for a technically strong manager. You should be comfortable rolling up your sleeves and getting into the details: reviewing designs, pressure-testing architectural decisions, debugging production issues alongside the team, and writing code when the moment calls for it. You don't need to be the deepest engineer in the room, but you need to be credible enough to earn the trust of a senior team and engaged enough to know when something is off.

We offer flexibility to work from home or from one of our global office hubs, and we value in-person time for planning, problem-solving, and connection. Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our San Francisco, Los Angeles or Seattle hubs.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow a team of senior software engineers and, over time, other engineering managers. Hire well, develop leaders, and shape the org as it scales.

• Own team strategy and execution. Empower senior ICs to define technical direction and architecture, while staying technically engaged enough to challenge decisions, unblock tradeoffs, and step in when course-correction is needed.

• Shape the Backend Platforms roadmap, balancing investment across new capabilities, developer productivity, and platform-level tech debt.

• Lead the team in evolving Whatnot's Python and Elixir backend cores: the Main Back End, async and messaging infrastructure, and the storage and database layer underneath.

• Own the platforms behind Whatnot's realtime product surface, including Live Service and Auction Service, which power the livestream and bidding experience at the heart of the business.

• Drive measurable improvements in platform reliability, performance, and developer ergonomics across the systems this team owns.

• Partner with Reliability, Infrastructure, and product engineering teams to shape architecture and standards across Whatnot.

• Build a culture of engineering and operational excellence: high code quality, clear ownership, disciplined deprecation, and accountability for production behavior.

In addition to embodying our cultural principles, great candidates will also have:

• 10+ years of industry experience in platform or infrastructure engineering, with 7+ years managing engineering teams. Experience managing managers or leading multiple teams is strongly preferred.

• A high bar for both engineering and operational excellence. You're energized by building backend platforms the rest of engineering depends on, and you take pride in owning how those systems behave in production.

• Proven track record building and operating backend platforms or runtime services used by other engineering teams as customers.

• Strong technical grounding in backend systems at scale, including high-traffic realtime or event-driven platforms. Whatnot's backend runs on Python and Elixir, with Go used for performance-sensitive components. Direct experience with any of these is a plus; equally strong candidates from other modern backend stacks who are eager to learn are welcome.

• Demonstrated ability to steward technical direction across multiple workstreams and guide senior ICs through complex architectural decisions and platform migrations.

• Exceptional communication and leadership skills, with the ability to influence technical direction across teams and at the executive level.

• 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

  • 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

  • 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.

Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability status, or any other status protected by local law. We believe that our work is better and our company culture is improved when we encourage, support, and respect the different skills and experiences represented within our workforce.