Staff Software Engineer, Ads

Whatnot
New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Krakow
Full timeUSD 245,000 - 290,000 annuallyFunction: Software EngineeringExperience: 8+ yearsEducation: bachelorsSkills: ["Technical judgment","Communication","Cross-organizational influence","Ownership","Mentoring"]

Shape the technical foundation of an ads marketplace by designing and leading high-throughput, low-latency backend systems for bidding, pacing, ranking, forecasting, and real-time decision-making. Build foundational services for budget allocation, experimentation, attribution, and measurement, and ensure reliability through observability, resilience, and incident response. Partner with product, machine learning, and infrastructure teams to turn marketplace problems into scalable backend and algorithmic solutions.

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FursaFursa
Whatnot
Whatnot
5 days ago

Staff Software Engineer, Ads

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

Job Summary

Shape the technical foundation of an ads marketplace by designing and leading high-throughput, low-latency backend systems for bidding, pacing, ranking, forecasting, and real-time decision-making. Build foundational services for budget allocation, experimentation, attribution, and measurement, and ensure reliability through observability, resilience, and incident response. Partner with product, machine learning, and infrastructure teams to turn marketplace problems into scalable backend and algorithmic solutions.
Location: New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Krakow
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Software Engineering
Seniority: Mid level

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 ecosystem health.
  • •Build foundational services for budget management, allocation, forecasting, experimentation, attribution, and measurement.
  • •Develop 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 - 290,000 annually
Perks:Health InsuranceMedicalDentalVisionRemote WorkHome OfficeCell PhoneInternetWellness StipendChildcarePaid Leave401kPensionParental Leave

Key Requirements

  • •Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or related field) or equivalent work experience.
  • •8+ years (Staff) or 10+ years (Senior Staff) of backend/distributed systems engineering experience.
  • •Strong mastery of distributed systems fundamentals such as consensus, partitioning, replication, coordination, sharding, and state management.
  • •Deep experience building high-throughput, low-latency services and stream processing (e.g., Kafka, Flink).
  • •Proficiency in one or more languages (e.g., Python, Go) and scripting, plus experience with messaging, caches (e.g., Redis, RocksDB), and data pipelines.
Experience:8+ yearsLive commerceAdsMarketplaceDistributed systemsMachine learning
Education:Bachelor's
Skills:Technical judgmentCommunicationCross-organizational influenceOwnershipMentoring
Tech Stack:PythonGoKafkaFlinkRedisRocksDBData pipelines

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