Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads

Whatnot
New York, Krakow
Workplace: HybridFull timeUSD 245,000 - 300,000 annuallyFunction: Data Science & Machine LearningExperience: 8+ yearsEducation: bachelorsSkills: ["Technical judgment","Communication","Cross-organizational influence","Ownership","Mentorship"]

Build the technical foundation for an ads marketplace by designing and leading high-throughput, low-latency backend systems for auction mechanics and real-time decision-making. Own core services across bidding, pricing, pacing, ranking, forecasting, budget management, and experimentation, while creating reliable integrations between auction services, ML models, and data pipelines. Drive architecture, performance, resilience, and operational excellence through the full production lifecycle.

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FursaFursa
Whatnot
Whatnot
4 days ago

Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Ads

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Canonical indexed version, validated from employer's careers page.

Source: Company careers pageValidated by: Fursa AI
Last checked: 13 hours agoStatus: Live

Job Summary

Build the technical foundation for an ads marketplace by designing and leading high-throughput, low-latency backend systems for auction mechanics and real-time decision-making. Own core services across bidding, pricing, pacing, ranking, forecasting, budget management, and experimentation, while creating reliable integrations between auction services, ML models, and data pipelines. Drive architecture, performance, resilience, and operational excellence through the full production lifecycle.
Location: New York, Krakow
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Data Science & Machine Learning

Key Responsibilities

  • •Architect and lead implementation of high-throughput, low-latency backend systems for ad auctions, bidding, pacing, ranking, and delivery.
  • •Design auction mechanisms balancing seller value, buyer experience, marketplace efficiency, and long-term ecosystem health.
  • •Build foundational services for budget management, allocation, forecasting, experimentation, attribution, and measurement.
  • •Develop reliable integrations between real-time auction services, machine learning models, data pipelines, and marketplace systems.
  • •Own performance, resilience, observability, and scalability across the production lifecycle, including incident response and postmortems.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 245,000 - 300,000 annually
Perks:Health InsuranceDentalVisionRemote WorkHome Office401kPensionPaid LeaveParental LeaveChildcareWellness StipendMeal Allowance

Key Requirements

  • •Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent work experience).
  • •8+ years (Staff) or 10+ years (Senior Staff) of backend/distributed systems engineering experience.
  • •Strong distributed systems fundamentals (e.g., consensus, partitioning, replication, coordination, sharding, state management).
  • •Deep experience building high-throughput, low-latency services and stream processing systems (e.g., Kafka, Flink).
  • •Experience leading architecture and scaling core systems under high load in an ads, ranking, or ML serving context (nice to have for ads domain).
Experience:8+ yearsDistributed systemsStream processingAds systemsRankingML servingInternational commerce
Education:Bachelor's
Skills:Technical judgmentCommunicationCross-organizational influenceOwnershipMentorship
Tech Stack:PythonGoKafkaFlinkRedisRocksDB

Company Brief

Whatnot
Whatnot is a live-stream shopping marketplace connecting sellers and collectors for trading cards, toys, and collectibles. The platform hosts live auctions and interactive streams, enabling creators and small businesses to sell directly to engaged communities.
Industry: Online Marketplaces
Company Size: Large (251 to 1,000 employees)
Growth: Scaleup
Valuation: Unicorn (USD 1B+)
Funding: Series D
Headquarters: United States
Founded: 2019
WebsiteLinkedIn