Senior / Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure at Whatnot (W20)
Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in the U.S.
Los Angeles, CA / Remote (US)
Full-time
3+ years
About Whatnot

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.

About the role
Skills: Git, Kubernetes, Python, Docker

🚀 Whatnot

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 and learn what our team is up to through our engineering blog.

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 120+ employees and will exceed 300 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.

📈 Opportunity Size

The ecommerce 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 $170B GMV market in China and has grown 100% YoY. Retail is a $5T market opportunity!

💻 Role

As part of the infrastructure team, you will be responsible for building and scaling Whatnot’s best-in-class live streaming and marketplace service for all of our users. You will be building the foundations for Whatnot’s future across reliability, scalability, and performance of our systems.

  • Ensuring availability, performance, security, and scalability of production systems.
  • Work with the engineering team to get services deployed across different environments.
  • Scale for capacity and traffic spikes of 20x normal load during high-volume events
  • Providing recommendations for architecture and process improvements.
  • Maintain an efficient CI/CD pipeline to help developers ship the software faster and safer in a structured environment.

👋 About You

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.

  • You have experience in scaling a hyper-growth startup.
  • 5+ years of infrastructure engineering experience building scalable systems that can handle millions of users.
  • Prior experience in a public cloud environment (AWS, GCP).
  • Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform experience required.
  • Expert knowledge of various CI/CD workflows.
  • You are known for shipping lightning fast.
  • Excellent communication/writing skills.
  • Self-starter. You will be able to hit the ground running with little direction.
  • You can write code - experience programming in a professional setting (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript - knowledge of these in particular not required).
  • Lastly, Whatnot fosters a culture of being exceptionally user-focused, moving incredibly fast, taking big swings, and having a “figure-it-out” mentality. These principles have held up time and time again, and allowed us to create something that has changed countless people's lives. This is why they are a core part of our principles today and we hope that you could see yourself contributing to them.

🎁 Benefits

  • 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
  • Laptop provided by Whatnot and home office setup allowance
  • $450 work-from-anywhere quarterly allowance for cell phone, internet, or co-working space
  • Up to $500 monthly to spend within Whatnot App
  • $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
  • Employer matching contributions of 100% of up to 4% of contributions on base salary

💛 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.

Technology

Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, Serverless

Databases: Postgres, DynamoDB, ElasticSearch, Redis

Backend: Python (Flask), Node, Elixir

Front-End React, GraphQL, Swift, Kotlin

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