Staff Software Engineer, Ads & Monetization

Whatnot (YC W20) is a livestream shopping platform and marketplace backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, and CapitalG. We’re one of YC’s top companies and one of the fastest growing marketplaces ever. We’re laser focused on creating an exceptional software company, team, and place to work. You can read our principles here.

Our mission: enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce. We’re building the future of ecommerce; an interactive community where creators can make a living off their passion.

Did we mention we’re high growth? In January 2021, Whatnot had 10 ambitious employees. Today, the Whatnot team is 300+ employees and will exceed 350 by year end. We’re hiring forward thinking problem solvers across all functional areas. We recruit thoughtfully, can adapt quickly, and are scaling fully remotely.

The e-commerce experience has been static for 20+ years and is one of the largest opportunities for disruption in the startup space today. Livestream shopping is a $300B GMV market in China and has grown 100% YoY. Retail is a $5T market opportunity!

Ads & Monetization is a brand new engineering team at Whatnot that is dedicated to building systems & features from the ground up, to help Sellers grow their business. In addition, the team will look at other 0 to 1 monetization products that help Sellers differentiate themselves on the Whatnot platform.

As a software engineer on the Ads & Monetization team, the most important qualities you'll need are making sound product decisions, navigating new domains seamlessly, taking extreme ownership, and shipping high-quality products fast. We always prioritize the highest impact features and ship them quickly. The software team has a lot of individual responsibility and many more freedoms, so we need to hire people we can trust. Your ability to put customers first, make good trade-offs and deliver impact is essential to us. 

In this role, you will…

• Build 0 to 1 ads products by working across the full ads stack including bidding & targeting, ranking, serving, campaign management, and seller tooling
• Build highly scalable Ads system that handles all aspects of running an online advertising system and helps sellers differentiate themselves on Whatnot
• Understand our buyer and seller experiences and become an expert in helping them effectively scale their business through ads & monetization products

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

As our next Staff Software Engineer, you should have 6+ years of software engineering experience combined with 4+ years of industry experience in one of the following areas: ads infra, ads delivery or systems, news/home feed ranking systems infra, recommendation/ranking systems, search engines and/or search infra. You also:

• Have built scalable systems at a high growth company, with minimal guidance, and are comfortable owning a large focus area (i.e Ads ranking & serving). 
• Possess exceptional product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution.
• Prioritize building inclusive teams, while delegating with ease and providing support to the engineers on your team(s).
• Juggle short term needs with long term requirements and make the correct tradeoff between both for what’s in the long term interest of our business.
• Mentor other engineers who look up to you, and enjoy your contributions to solving their problems.
• Are comfortable working across the stack (backend and frontend) and have the ability to pick up on new technologies very quickly.
• Have a proven track record of delivering features and shipping products lightning-fast without sacrificing quality.

• Competitive base salary and stock options
• Unlimited Vacation Policy and No Meeting Holidays
• Health Insurance options including Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, Short term disability & Long term Disability
• Whatnot covers 99% of employee premium costs, and 75% of dependent care premiums for Medical
• Dental and Vision sponsored 100% by Whatnot for employees and dependents
• Work From Home Support
• Laptop provided by Whatnot and home office setup allowance
• $450 work-from-anywhere quarterly allowance for cell phone, internet, or co-working space
• Care benefits
• $1,350 quarterly allowance on food
• $1,500 quarterly allowance for wellness
• 16 weeks Paid Parental Leave and gradual return to work
• $20,000 for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
• 401k offering for Traditional and Roth accounts provided by Betterment
• Employer matching contributions of 100% of up to 4% of contributions on base salary

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.