Software Engineer, Platform Engineering

Whatnot • Los Angeles, CA

120d

About The Position

Platform Engineers at Whatnot own the foundations of our main backends, real-time services, and storage systems. The team ensures these core platforms evolve to support rapid product growth while remaining reliable and scalable. This role is focused on our Python-based main backend and our storage platforms. You will help scale and optimize the runtime, refactor and modularize our codebases, improve storage systems, and build shared platform services and components that underpin the product experience. You will work on problems like: Evolving our Python runtime and stack by improving performance, concurrency, memory use, and dependency management. Building and scaling core platform services that provide the foundation for reliability, scalability, and developer velocity across engineering. Optimizing storage systems for consistency, scale, and performance. Embedding observability and reliability patterns into the platform by default. Refactoring and modularizing large-scale codebases to maintain developer velocity and ensure our primary codebases remain a productive environment at scale. Partnering with product and infra teams to deliver platform APIs and abstractions that strike the right balance between velocity and long-term stability. Laying the groundwork for future platform needs, from global expansion to enabling new product capabilities. This is a highly visible role: the platform team provides the technical foundation that allows Whatnot to scale rapidly while remaining reliable.

Requirements

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience (10+ for Staff-level).
• Strong experience with large-scale backend systems, ideally Python, but experience in other stacks (Java, Go, Elixir, etc.) welcome.
• Deep expertise with storage systems (Postgres, DynamoDB, Planetscale).
• Proven experience building or scaling messaging, notification, or caching systems.
• Background in refactoring large codebases for scale, performance, and maintainability.
• Hands-on with runtime and platform optimization such as concurrency models, async patterns, and memory tuning.
• Familiarity with service reliability and observability practices such as metrics, tracing, circuit breakers, and failure isolation.
• Comfortable operating in a cloud-native environment such as AWS or GCP with Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform.
• Known for setting strong technical standards and for building patterns that other engineers adopt.

Nice To Haves

• Prior experience in a hyper-growth environment.

Responsibilities

• Evolving our Python runtime and stack by improving performance, concurrency, memory use, and dependency management.
• Building and scaling core platform services that provide the foundation for reliability, scalability, and developer velocity across engineering.
• Optimizing storage systems for consistency, scale, and performance.
• Embedding observability and reliability patterns into the platform by default.
• Refactoring and modularizing large-scale codebases to maintain developer velocity and ensure our primary codebases remain a productive environment at scale.
• Partnering with product and infra teams to deliver platform APIs and abstractions that strike the right balance between velocity and long-term stability.
• Laying the groundwork for future platform needs, from global expansion to enabling new product capabilities.

Benefits

• 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
• Parental Leave; 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees