Engineering Manager, Backend Platforms

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.

Whatnot's Backend Platforms team owns the backend that powers live commerce at scale: the Python and Elixir cores, the realtime services behind every livestream and auction, and the storage and database layer the rest of engineering builds on. The work compounds: every improvement to these platforms raises the floor for hundreds of engineers and millions of buyers and sellers.

As a senior leader in our Infrastructure organization, you will own the strategy and execution of Backend Platforms. You will manage senior ICs and, as the team grows, other engineering managers, shaping org structure, developing leaders, and setting strategy across multiple workstreams. You will partner with engineering teams across the company to accelerate delivery and ensure Whatnot's platform scales with the business.

We're looking for a technically strong manager. You should be comfortable rolling up your sleeves and getting into the details: reviewing designs, pressure-testing architectural decisions, debugging production issues alongside the team, and writing code when the moment calls for it. You don't need to be the deepest engineer in the room, but you need to be credible enough to earn the trust of a senior team and engaged enough to know when something is off.