Product Design Director, Seller

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. We’re re-defining e-commerce by blending community, shopping, and entertainment into a community just for you. As a remote co-located team, we’re inspired by innovation and anchored in our values. With hubs in the US, UK, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, we’re building the future of online marketplaces –together.

From fashion, beauty, and electronics to collectibles like trading cards, comic books, and even live plants, our live auctions have something for everyone.

And we’re just getting started! As one of the fastest growing marketplaces, we’re looking for bold, forward-thinking problem solvers across all functional areas. 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.

We’re looking for a Product Design Director to shape the future of commerce on our platform. This leader will guide a team of talented designers focused on empowering sellers—from creating and managing their inventory to presenting their products to buyers. This team also plays a key role in defining unique sales formats, payments, shipping, logistics, and more.

As a player-coach, you’ll balance leading, mentoring, and rolling up your sleeves to design impactful experiences. You’ll help elevate the team’s craft, drive design strategy, and collaborate cross-functionally with product, engineering, research, and business teams to deliver innovative solutions that make commerce seamless, intuitive, and delightful.

• Lead & Inspire: Guide and grow a team of designers, fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, and excellence.

• Design & Execute: Contribute hands-on to critical projects, setting the bar for craft and execution while mentoring others.

• Strategic Thinking: Define and articulate a vision for how commerce should work on our platform, ensuring alignment with business and user needs.

• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, engineers, and researchers to bring ideas to life, balancing usability, feasibility, and business impact.

• Evolve the Seller Experience: Help build and refine seller tools that support inventory management, product presentation, pricing, payments, and logistics.

• Innovate on Sales Formats: Partner with teams to explore and design unique ways for buyers to shop and sellers to sell.

Team members in this role are required to be within commuting distance of our New York, NY,  San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA or Los Angeles, CA hubs.

Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that embodying a low ego, growth mindset, and high-impact drive goes a long way here.

As our next Product Design Director, you should have 7+ years of product design experience, with at least 3 years leading teams, plus:

• A player-coach mindset—excited to mentor, but equally passionate about designing and solving problems hands-on.

• Strong portfolio showcasing interaction and visual design skills, with a track record of shipping successful products.

• Experience designing complex systems—bonus points for e-commerce, marketplace, or seller tools experience.

• Ability to navigate ambiguity and complexity, breaking down challenges into clear, actionable steps.

• A collaborative approach, with experience working closely with cross-functional teams in an agile environment.

• A strategic mindset with the ability to connect user needs with business goals.

• Passion for designing products that are both functional and delightful.

• 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.