Machine Learning Engineer, Content and Navigation at whatnot

This role is ideal for a mid-to-senior ML Generalist who thrives in fast-paced startup environments. You should have at least 4 years of experience building and

Work type: onsite

Location: San Francisco, CA | New York, NY | Los Angeles, CA | Seattle, WA

Salary: $245,000 – $345,000/yr

Type: Full-time

Summary

This role is ideal for a mid-to-senior ML Generalist who thrives in fast-paced startup environments. You should have at least 4 years of experience building and deploying production-grade models, specifically within search, recommendations, or NLP. The team values "product-first" engineers who prioritize user experience over technical complexity and have a track record of shipping features quickly. The compensation is highly competitive, offering a base salary up to $345,000 plus stock options. While the company supports a "remote co-located" model, you must live within commuting distance of their hubs in SF, NY, LA, or Seattle for in-person collaboration. Standout perks include a 4% 401k match, 16 weeks of parental leave, and a dedicated monthly budget to "dogfood" the app by buying and selling collectibles. **You might be a good fit if you:** * Have practical experience applying LLMs and intent-understanding to consumer-scale data. * Are proficient in Python, SQL, and modern ML frameworks. * Enjoy end-to-end ownership, from data engineering and model training to backend implementation. * Prefer a high-growth culture where shipping "lightning-fast" is the standard.

Job Description

## 🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!

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](https://www.whatnot.com/careers) 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](https://a16z.com/marketplace-100/) and were recently named the [#1 Best Startup Employer in America](http://google.com/search?q=%231+forbes+startup+employer&oq=%231+forbes+startup+employer&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg9MgYIAhBFGD0yBggDEEUYQDIGCAQQRRhAMgYIBRBFGEDSAQg1NzM0ajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) by Forbes. Check out the latest Whatnot updates on our [news](https://blog.teamwhatnot.com/) and [engineering blogs](https://medium.com/whatnot-engineering) and join us as we enable anyone to turn their passion into a business and bring people together through commerce.

## 💻 Role

The Discovery Content and Navigation (CAN) team’s mission is to capture intent and content signals to build a seamless, engaging, and personalized navigation experience for Whatnot buyers. We’re passionate about enabling and maintaining a healthy discovery ecosystem—one where buyers can easily find fun shows and connect with sellers.

Our work spans a wide range of problems, including search, taxonomy, events, and intent and content understanding. We leverage AI technology, make data-informed decisions, and ship quickly to deliver value to our users.

What you'll do:

• Lead the design, development, and productionization of ML models to capture intent and content signals that powers personalized navigational experience, search, and recommendations

• Lead ML-based projects from end-to-end: scoping and planning, data collection and feature engineering, model training and deployment, backend implementation, and online experimentation

• Support product initiatives like category and brand recommendations, promote high quality and relevant livestreams and products in feed and search.

• Work closely with teammates and cross-functional partners to implement ML-based solutions into production at scale

• Drive technical excellence and establish ML best practices across the team and org.

## 👋 You

People who do well at Whatnot tend to be comfortable figuring things out as they go, biased toward action, and genuinely curious about what they're building. They care more about outcomes than credit and stay close to the product and the people using it.

As our next Machine Learning Engineer you should have 4+ years of generalist software development experience in high growth startups, plus:

• 4+ years of industry experience building and deploying ML models to solve user problems at scale.

• Industry 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, content understanding, natural language processing, and large language models.

• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and common ML frameworks.

• Strong communication and leadership skills; ability to influence roadmap and align cross-functional teams in a remote environment.

• Excellent product instincts. You first think about users rather than the best technical solution.

• You are known for shipping products and features lightning-fast.

For US-based applicants:$245,000 - $345,000/year + benefits + stock options

The salary range may be inclusive of several levels that would be applicable to the position. Final salary will be based on a number of factors including, level, relevant prior experience, skills and expertise. This range is only inclusive of base salary, not benefits (more details below) or equity in the form of stock options.

## 🎁 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.

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.

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