Demo

Software Engineer, Discovery (Search)

Whatnot
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 12/21/2025
AVAILABLE BEFORE 1/27/2026
🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!

Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. We’re re-defining e-commerce by blending community, shopping, and entertainment into a community just for you. As a remote co-located team, we’re inspired by innovation and anchored in our values. With hubs in the US, UK, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, we’re building the future of online marketplaces –together.

From fashion, beauty, and electronics to collectibles like trading cards, comic books, and even live plants, our live auctions have something for everyone.

And we’re just getting started! As one of the fastest growing marketplaces, we’re looking for bold, forward-thinking problem solvers across all functional areas. 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

Search engineers at Whatnot are responsible for building the best search experience for users to find the most relevant content on the platform: streams, products, and others in the community. To achieve our goals, we are passionate about understanding, building and maintaining a healthy ecosystem, where buyers find engaging content and sellers thrive with their business. We focus on a wide variety of problems: taxonomy, search and filters, retrieval and ranking algorithms, as well as content understanding. We make data informed decisions and ship quickly to benefit our users. The software team has a lot of individual responsibility and many more freedoms, so we need to hire people we can trust. Your ability to make good trade-offs and exercise good judgment is essential to us.

At this time, we are hiring Backend Engineers for the Search team.

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 City, San Francisco, Seattle or Los Angeles hub.

👋 You

  • 4 years of software engineering experience.
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, a related field, or equivalent work experience.
  • Software engineering experience with a track record of applying practical methods to solve real-world problems on consumer scale data.
  • Experience in applied statistical and machine learning fields e.g. Search, Recommendations, Fraud & Anomaly Detection, Experimentation and Causal Analysis.
  • Knowledge of at least 3 languages (we primarily use Python, Elixir, JavaScript, and are open to others).
  • Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution.
  • You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast.
  • You’re an excellent problem solver and don’t need to be told exactly what to do.
  • Ability to pick up on new technologies very quickly.
  • Proven track record of delivering features.
  • Startup experience at a high-growth company.

🎁 Benefits

  • Flexible Time off Policy and Company-wide Holidays (including a spring and winter break)
  • 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
    • All Whatnauts are expected to develop a deep understanding of our product. We're passionate about building the best user experience, and all employees are expected to use Whatnot as both a buyer and a seller as part of their job (our dogfooding budget makes this fun and easy!).
  • Parental Leave
    • 16 weeks of paid parental leave one month gradual return to work *company leave allowances run concurrently with country leave requirements which take precedence.
💛 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.

Compensation Range: $170K - $230K

Salary : $170,000 - $230,000

If your compensation planning software is too rigid to deploy winning incentive strategies, it’s time to find an adaptable solution. Compensation Planning
Enhance your organization's compensation strategy with salary data sets that HR and team managers can use to pay your staff right. Surveys & Data Sets

What is the career path for a Software Engineer, Discovery (Search)?

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs on the Software Engineer, Discovery (Search) career path by checking the boxes next to the positions that interest you.
Income Estimation: 
$97,257 - $120,701
Income Estimation: 
$123,167 - $152,295
Income Estimation: 
$97,257 - $120,701
Income Estimation: 
$123,167 - $152,295
Income Estimation: 
$123,167 - $152,295
Income Estimation: 
$146,673 - $180,130
Income Estimation: 
$146,673 - $180,130
Income Estimation: 
$176,149 - $220,529
Income Estimation: 
$77,657 - $95,021
Income Estimation: 
$97,257 - $120,701

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs with skills like those required for the Software Engineer, Discovery (Search).

Click the checkbox next to the jobs that you are interested in.

  • Analysis of Algorithms Skill

    • Income Estimation: $188,927 - $229,849
    • Income Estimation: $226,694 - $284,387
  • Bug/Defect Analysis Skill

    • Income Estimation: $90,707 - $120,959
    • Income Estimation: $94,044 - $125,068
View Core, Job Family, and Industry Job Skills and Competency Data for more than 15,000 Job Titles Skills Library

Job openings at Whatnot

  • Whatnot Seattle, WA
  • 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the thing... more
  • 13 Days Ago

  • Whatnot York, NY
  • 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the thing... more
  • 13 Days Ago

  • Whatnot Los Angeles, CA
  • 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the thing... more
  • 13 Days Ago

  • Whatnot Los Angeles, CA
  • 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the thing... more
  • 13 Days Ago


Not the job you're looking for? Here are some other Software Engineer, Discovery (Search) jobs in the San Francisco, CA area that may be a better fit.

  • Whatnot San Francisco, CA
  • 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot! Whatnot is the largest live shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the thing... more
  • 8 Days Ago

  • Ironclad San Francisco, CA
  • Business runs on contracts. Every dollar earned, relationship formed, and advantage gained comes down to the contract that makes it real. But getting a con... more
  • 14 Days Ago

AI Assistant is available now!

Feel free to start your new journey!