Whatnot
Staff Software Engineer, Ads
$245K–$290K
New York, NY +1 · Staff · Full-time · Posted Aug 21, 2026
- Location
- New York, NY
Kraków, Poland - Experience
- 8+ years (for Staff) or 10+ years (for Senior Staff) of backend/distributed systems engineering experience.
- Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience.
About the job
Lead the design and delivery of Whatnot’s advertising auction and monetization systems, from real-time backend services to production operations.
What you'll do
- Architect high-throughput, low-latency systems for ad auctions, bidding, pacing, ranking, and delivery.
- Build foundational services for budget allocation, forecasting, experimentation, attribution, and measurement; ensure reliability and scalability.
- Lead technical decisions and cross-functional work with product, machine learning, and infrastructure teams; mentor engineers and guide the technical roadmap.
What they ask for
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience.
- 8+ years (for Staff) or 10+ years (for Senior Staff) of backend/distributed systems engineering experience.
- Strong distributed systems fundamentals and experience with high-throughput, low-latency services and stream processing.
- Proficiency in one or more languages (e.g., Python, Go); proven experience leading architecture and scaling core systems under high load.
Nice to have
- Startup experience at a high-growth company.
- Experience with ads systems, infrastructure, and international commerce.
Pay
$245K - $290K (base salary; currency not stated)
Tools
Kafka, Flink, Python, Go, Redis, RocksDB
AI focus
Integrate real-time auction services with machine learning models and partner with machine learning teams on backend and algorithmic solutions.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative