Software Engineer (Python, Java)

About The Company Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe, revolutionizing the way people buy, sell, and discover their favorite items.

Our platform enables users to trade a wide range of products including trading cards, fashion, electronics, and live plants, empowering sellers to build genuine businesses across hundreds of categories. As a pioneer in live commerce, we are creating an industry at an unprecedented scale in the West, with no existing playbook to follow. Our innovative approach and rapid growth have positioned us as a leader in the marketplace industry.

We operate as a remote co-located team, with hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia. Our company culture is driven by core values such as moving fast, staying close to our users, and focusing on impactful work. Recognized as the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes, Whatnot continues to expand its reach and influence, enabling anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring communities together through commerce.

About The Role The Trust and Risk, Fraud, and Integrity teams at Whatnot are dedicated to building systems that foster a safe, trustworthy, and fair marketplace. This role involves designing and developing scalable, high-performance systems that set behavioral expectations, detect and address policy violations, and resolve disputes efficiently.

You will work on building and maintaining infrastructure that supports internal operations, automated actions, and advanced detection capabilities using machine learning, behavioral analysis, and real-time interventions.

As a key member of the team, you will focus on proactive detection and prevention of abuse, ensuring the platform remains secure for both buyers and sellers. You will be involved in the entire development lifecycle—from ideation and prototyping to deployment and ongoing monitoring—contributing to continuous improvement initiatives. Collaboration across multiple product teams and operational units will be essential, as you help surface insights and develop solutions that evolve with emerging abuse patterns and account integrity risks.

Flexibility to work remotely or from one of our global office hubs is available, with a preference for candidates residing within commuting distance of our hubs in Seattle, New York City, San Francisco, or Los Angeles. This role offers an exciting opportunity to impact a rapidly growing platform and shape the future of live commerce.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Economics, or a related technical field, or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of total software engineering experience
• 4+ years of experience building for consumer-scale loads
• 1+ years of experience writing production code in Python
• 1+ years of experience in Trust and Risk, Integrity, or Fraud domains (preferred)
• Strong business intuition and a data-driven mindset
• Experience with data warehouses and transformation tools such as Snowflake, dbt, Dagster
• Excellent communication and documentation skills
• Ability to work autonomously and lead cross-functional initiatives
• Comfortable collaborating in a remote environment

Responsibilities

• Design and develop systems to protect the platform by mitigating systemic risks and safeguarding users
• Build and iterate on production algorithms and infrastructure to prevent abuse and fraud
• Balance risk management with user experience, ensuring interventions add value without causing unnecessary friction
• Architect event-driven pipelines and detection frameworks for near real-time threat response
• Engage in all phases of the development lifecycle, including ideation, prototyping, load testing, deployment, and monitoring
• Collaborate with cross-team stakeholders to surface insights and develop scalable solutions
• Stay ahead of emerging abuse patterns by iterating quickly and rigorously testing defenses

Benefits

• Generous holiday and time-off policies
• Health insurance options including Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage
• Support for remote work setup, including a home office allowance
• Monthly allowances for cell phone and internet expenses
• Wellness benefits, including a monthly wellness allowance
• Annual childcare allowance
• Lifetime family planning benefits, such as adoption and fertility expenses
• Retirement plans including 401(k) with employer matching in the US, and pension plans internationally
• Monthly app usage allowance to promote product familiarity
• Paid parental leave of 16 weeks, plus a gradual return-to-work program

Equal Opportunity Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We value diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, parental status, disability, or any other protected characteristic.

We believe that diverse skills, perspectives, and experiences enhance our work culture and drive our success. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected status.