Whatnot is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Developer Tools team and drive our top strategic priority in AI tooling. In this high-visibility, high-autonomy role, you will build and own the AI tooling that shapes how Whatnot’s engineering organization—and increasingly, non-engineering teams—write code, ship software, and operate systems faster and more effectively.
What You'll Do
- Build and ship AI tooling across the full spectrum—from near-term developer productivity wins to long-term autonomous agent capabilities.
- Design and build sandboxed, containerized environments where AI agents can operate autonomously with appropriate guardrails.
- Build multi-agent orchestration systems and workflows, including CI-fixing agents, SRE context agents, and other autonomous AI capabilities.
- Enable non-engineers (PMs, designers, operations) to leverage AI tools effectively through purpose-built workflows, onboarding experiences, and low-code/no-code interfaces.
- Build and optimize AI-aware developer infrastructure: CLAUDE.md configurations, MCP servers, prompt engineering frameworks, and context management systems.
- Deploy, monitor, and maintain the infrastructure supporting AI tools and workflows to ensure high availability, performance, and reliability.
- Evaluate and integrate emerging AI tools and platforms as the landscape evolves.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, with a strong track record of building and shipping production systems.
- A software engineer first—backend-leaning is fine, but comfortable getting around a frontend codebase.
- A genuine developer tooling enthusiast who's built or improved internal tools, obsessed over local dev ergonomics, or contributed to platform infrastructure.
- Deeply familiar with the current generation of AI coding tools—Claude Code (strongly preferred), Cursor, Codex, or similar—and use them to get real work done.
- Strong product thinking—can translate ambiguous problem spaces into concrete plans and prioritize across competing initiatives.
- Comfortable writing a technical design doc and can clearly communicate what you’re building and why to people outside your team.
- Clear communicator who adapts naturally to your audience across the full spectrum of technical ability.
Nice to Have
- Experience with agent sandboxing, containerized execution environments, multi-agent orchestration, LLM APIs and observability, prompt engineering at scale, or enabling non-technical users to leverage AI-powered workflows.
Team & Environment
You’ll be joining the Developer Tools team and serving as the primary interface between that team and Whatnot’s AI Tooling Working Group.
Benefits & Compensation
- Generous Holiday and Time off Policy
- 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
- 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
- Parental Leave: 16 weeks of paid parental leave + one month gradual return to work
Work Mode
This is a hybrid role based in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
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.
