- Whatnot
- San Francisco, CA
- Full-Time
- 4 days ago
Software Engineer, Seller Growth.
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Software Engineer, Seller Growth: our view in 3 lines...
- The Role:This role is for a backend software engineer building seller growth systems for a live shopping marketplace.
- The Person:The person will design and build systems for identity verification, fraud detection, trust reviews, seller enrichment, predictive models, and experimentation platforms that support seller growth.
- Requirements:The ideal candidate has 5+ years of software engineering experience, a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience, and experience building scalable systems with Python, Elixir, JavaScript, SQL, and dbt.
About the role
Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!
Whatnot is the largest live 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 <u>values</u> 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 <u>fastest growing marketplaces</u> and were recently named the <u>#1 Best Startup Employer in America</u> by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our <u>news</u> and <u>engineering blogs</u> and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.
Role
Seller Growth is responsible for growing sellers on Whatnot — enabling them to turn their hobbies into businesses. Within Seller Growth, the Platform pod ensures that this growth is sustainable, trustworthy, and scalable. This pod works at the intersection of growth, trust, and platform-ization. You’ll be responsible for deeply technical systems (IDV, fraud signal repositories, seller enrichment pipelines, predictive models) that directly influence GMV, seller retention, and buyer trust. The pace is fast: every week, thousands of sellers apply to sell, and your work ensures that Whatnot can confidently scale this influx without compromising marketplace integrity.
As our next software engineer on Seller Growth Platform, you will design and build the systems that sit at the heart of the new seller funnel. Your work will focus on:
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Protecting the funnel from fraud and abuse: Developing and scaling systems for identity verification (IDV), fraud detection, and automated trust/risk reviews that safeguard buyers while minimizing friction for good sellers.
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Balancing growth with trust and safety: Ensuring that the thousands of new sellers joining weekly can sell successfully without degrading the buyer experience, while preventing bad actors from gaining distribution or abusing incentives.
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Building platform intelligence: Powering accurate seller identification (e.g., enrichment data, signals, and predictive LTV models) to route sellers to the right onboarding, incentive, and discovery paths.
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Creating scalable infrastructure: Partnering with Data Science and Trust teams to design reusable trust and reputation systems, modular fraud prevention frameworks, and experimentation platforms that other pods and teams across Whatnot can leverage.
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Driving long-term seller success: Enabling better bucketing of sellers by value and risk profile, ensuring that high-potential sellers are accelerated early, while low-quality or fraudulent sellers are contained before they reach scale.
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 New York or San Francisco hub.
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. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.
As our next Backend Engineer you should have 5+ years of software engineering experience , plus:
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Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent work experience.
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Experience building scalable systems (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript).
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Ability to work across the stack (backend and frontend).
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Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution.
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Proven track record of delivering features. You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast.
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Ability to take ownership of an ambiguous area and define and then drive impact.
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Ability to flexibly work across multiple workstreams, thriving in a fast-paced environment.
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Knowledge of data and growth systems like notifications.
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Scalability and data pipeline experience with SQL, dbt, etc.
Benefits
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Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
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Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision
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Work From Home Support
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Care benefits
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Retirement; 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts in the US (employer match up to 4% of base salary) and Pension plans internationally
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Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
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Parental Leave
Please note: Whatnot will only contact you through official @whatnot.com email addresses. If you see an email impersonating a Whatnot recruiter, please disregard and report it as spam.
EOE
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.
$205K – $290K • Offers Equity
The salary or hourly rate range may be inclusive of several levels that would be applicable to the position. Final salary or hourly rate will be based on a number of factors including, level, relevant prior experience, skills, and expertise. This range is only inclusive of base salary or hourly rate, not benefits or equity.
Whatnot is a community marketplace where you can safely buy, sell, go live and build a community with other like-minded people.
We got our start offering a buying and selling experience to collectors of Funko Pops and Pokemon cards. We became the leading marketplace for those communities and have found success launching into categories like sports cards, NFTs, and vintage fashion.
In July of 2022, we raised $260 million in a Series D funding round bringing our valuation to $3.7 billion, a 2.5x increase since our $1.5 billion valuation in September of 2021.
Our mission is to enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce. We enable anyone to connect, transact and build a business in one place -- Whatnot is bringing the in-person retail experience online.
