Staff Software Engineer, Trust & Safety

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 growing? In January 2021, Whatnot had 10 ambitious employees. We started 2023 with 350+ employees and are continuing to grow. We’re hiring forward thinking problem solvers across all functional areas. We recruit thoughtfully, can adapt quickly, and are scaling fully remotely.

📈 Opportunity Size

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!

Trust & Safety is a brand new engineering team at Whatnot that is dedicated to building systems and features which ensure our users have positive, safe experiences on Whatnot - we believe everyone is entitled to thrive on our platform. 

As a software engineer on the Trust & Safety team, you can expect to build systems and products that allow our users to better moderate their shows, help our internal team action and mitigate issues, solve complex systems problems to monitor & detect bad behavior from reams of data, and build solutions that scale to our next 20x of growth.

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 make good trade-offs and exercise good judgment is essential to us.

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• You’ve considerable experience in a Trust & Safety or related domain - you’ve seen problems like ours previously and can contribute to figuring out how to solve them at Whatnot.
• Knowledge of multiple programming languages (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript - knowledge of these in particular not required).
• Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution.
• You can mentor others, and prioritize building inclusive, supportive teams.
• You can 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.
• You’re comfortable owning a large focus area (i.e Fraud or Payment Infrastructure). 
• You can delegate with ease, and be supportive to the engineers on your team(s).
• You’re a strong cross-functional communicator.
• Engineers look up to you, and enjoy your contributions to solving their problems.
• You are an Engineering leader that is empowered and capable of directing your and the team's work
• You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast.
• You’re an excellent problem solver and don’t need to be told exactly what to do.
• You’re open to doing frontend work when required.
• Ability to pick up on new technologies very quickly.
• Proven track record of delivering features.  
• Experience with payment systems, infrastructure or experiences. (nice to have)
• Startup experience at a high-growth company. (nice to have)

• Competitive base salary and stock options
• Unlimited Vacation Policy and Company-wide Holidays (including a spring and winter break)
• 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 and internet
• Care benefits
  • $1,350 quarterly allowance on food
  • $1,500 quarterly allowance for wellness
  • 16 weeks Paid Parental Leave and gradual return to work
  • $5,000 annual allowance towards Childcare
  • $20,000 lifetime benefit for family planning, such as adoption or fertility expenses
• Professional Development
  • $2,000 annual benefit to invest in your professional development
• 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.