Software Engineer, Inventory Experience

Whatnot • San Francisco, CA

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

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.
Role
The Inventory team, nested within Seller Engineering, supports sellers with managing their merchandise on Whatnot and representing it as accurately as possible so they can reach more buyers. We strive to do this in the fewest steps possible so sellers can get back to what they do best: selling and engaging with their community. You'll be at the forefront of building a redesigned vision for how our sellers sell live on Whatnot today. 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 hub.
You Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that embodying a low ego, growth mindset, and high-impact drive goes a long way here.

Requirements

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on backend systems and services
• Have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Have experience designing, building, and operating APIs and backend services in production (we primarily use Python and Elixir; prior experience preferred but not required)
• Have a solid understanding of relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and data modeling for transactional systems
• Have excellent product instincts. You first think about the seller and buyer experience rather than the best technical solution
• Are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast
• Are comfortable defining and completing loosely scoped work without constant direction
• Are not afraid to push back on the team's ideas to call out potential blind spots and advocate for the right trade-off
• Have a proven track record of owning and delivering projects from scoping through production and beyond
• Team members in this role must live within commuting distance of our New York hub.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with event-driven architectures (Kafka, SQS, etc.)
• API design (GraphQL, REST)
• e-commerce or marketplace domains (catalog systems, inventory management, order fulfillment)
• containerized deployments (Kubernetes, Docker)
• integrating LLMs into production workflows (e.g., structured extraction, classification, or content generation for catalog and listing data)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level