Job Description
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.
💻 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
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 New York City or Seattle hubs.
👋 YouPeople 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 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.
Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
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
What the Team is Saying




What We Do
We bring people together around the things they love and turn their passions into their livelihood.
Why Work With Us
Passion is the centerpiece of our culture. We’ve got passionate buyers sellers and employees. We want you to bring your passions to Whatnot.
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Whatnot Offices
Remote Workspace
Employees work remotely.
Our “office optional” policy lets you work where you’re most productive. With options of working from home in person or a mix of both. We have office hubs within the US UK Ireland Poland and Germany today.
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Date Posted
03/30/2026
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