Whatnot · 2 hours ago
Software Engineer, Core Python Engineering
San Francisco, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$190K/yr - $260K/yr
7+ years expWhatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe, redefining e-commerce by blending community, shopping, and entertainment. The Software Engineer in Core Python Engineering will focus on evolving Python-based backends and storage systems, ensuring scalability and reliability as the company grows.
CollectiblesE-CommerceInformation TechnologyMarketplaceTrading Platform
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
Qualification
Required
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
Preferred
Bonus: prior experience in a hyper-growth environment
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
Company
Whatnot
Whatnot is a livestream shopping platform for buying and selling products.
501-1000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Whatnot has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (27)
2024 (20)
2023 (18)
2022 (10)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageTotal Funding
$974.7MKey Investors
CapitalGY Combinator Continuity FundAndreessen Horowitz
2025-10-28Series F· $225M
2025-01-08Series E· $265M
2022-07-21Series D· $260M
Leadership Team
Jeff Chang
Director of Engineering, Head of Growth
Recent News
2025-12-26
2025-12-25
Company data provided by crunchbase