Whatnot is the largest livestream 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, Ireland, Poland, and Germany, we’re building the future of online marketplaces—together.
From fashion, beauty, and electronics to rare 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.
💻 RoleYou will work in cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams, allowing you to directly shape the security and integrity of our user account systems. Your goal will be to minimize risk and potential abuse by ensuring robust authentication, authorization, and access controls across our environment. You will empower other teams to move fast without compromising user trust by delivering secure-by-default infrastructure, scalable permissioning systems, and reliable storage for sensitive user data.
Your designs, code, and ideas will contribute to solving some of the most complex technical challenges we face today and help define future engineering initiatives.
Some sample projects you might work on are:
Authentication
Authorization
Permissions
Access control systems across the environment
Building a secure storage for PII user data
Team members in this role are required to be within commuting distance of our San Francisco Hub.
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 Software Engineer, you should have 5+ years of infrastructure engineering experience, building scalable systems that can handle millions of users, plus:
Experience with large distributed systems handling substantial traffic
Previous experience at a hyper-growth startup. You’re a self-starter who can hit the ground running with little direction.
Self-driven with result-oriented mindset
Excellent communication and writing skills.
Exceptional coding skills and the ability to ship new products lightning-fast. We primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript, but previous knowledge of each is not required.
Knowledge in areas like cryptography, networking, authentication, and authorization is crucial.
Experience in implementing security measures such as encryption, access controls, data minimization, and regular audits to safeguard PII.
Nice to have a prior experience in a public cloud environment (AWS, GCP) using Kubernetes, Docker, and/or Terraform.
Nice to have a startup experience at high-growth companies.
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.
Please find our Whatnot Candidate Privacy Notice here.
💛 EOEWhatnot 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.
Top Skills
Whatnot Culver City, California, USA Office
Whatnot Whatnot Office
Culver City, California, United States
Similar Jobs at Whatnot
What you need to know about the Los Angeles Tech Scene
Key Facts About Los Angeles Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 375,800; 5.5% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Snap, Netflix, SpaceX, Disney, Google
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, adtech, media, software, game development
- Funding Landscape: $11.6 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Strong Ventures, Fifth Wall, Upfront Ventures, Mucker Capital, Kittyhawk Ventures
- Research Centers and Universities: California Institute of Technology, UCLA, University of Southern California, UC Irvine, Pepperdine, California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, Center for Quantum Science and Engineering