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# Staff+ Backend Engineer

- **Company:** Whatnot Inc.
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States (Remote available)
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Python (Programming Language), PostgreSQL, Software Engineering, Software Systems, Backend, Elixir, Legacy Systems
- **Published:** November 10, 2026
- **Apply:** https://startup.jobs/staff-software-engineer-cx-whatnot-com-10722928

## About the Role

Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We've found that low ego and a growth mindset, while leaning into action, details, and impact, go a long way here.

As our next Staff+ Backend Engineer, you bring 9+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership on complex backend systems, and:

 * Customer experience domain depth: Meaningful experience building customer support, service, marketplace post-purchase, or other operationally complex customer-facing systems. You understand that CX is a system of experiences, policies, workflows, and operations-not just a ticketing tool-and can bring that context to technical decisions.
 * Backend systems expertise: A track record of designing, building, and operating reliable, high-scale backend services and end-to-end product experiences. Experience with Python, Elixir, and/or Postgres is useful.
 * Technical strategy and architecture: Ability to identify the systems and foundational investments a product area needs next, set a clear technical direction, and evolve legacy systems without stopping product delivery.
 * End-to-end ownership: You lead initiatives from problem discovery and technical design through launch, measurement, reliability, and iteration. You make progress across organizational boundaries and surface risks and dependencies early.

## Description

We're looking for a Staff+ Backend Engineer to help build the systems behind a world-class Customer Experience platform at Whatnot. As Whatnot grows across buyers, sellers, markets, and support channels, our challenge is to resolve increasingly complex needs quickly and reliably-while protecting customer trust and making support scale with the business.

Our work spans support intake and routing, buyer and seller support, Seller Provided Support (SPS), refunds and returns, CX Inbox and AI-powered support. We're building toward a more connected experience: capture context once, make it easy for the right system or person to resolve the issue, and ensure the outcome is completed and communicated across channels.

You'll help set the technical direction for the next generation of CX systems. That includes making AI-assisted support safe and measurable; building configurable, observable, and testable automation; improving how support requests and conversations connect across surfaces; and strengthening the backend workflows that carry a case through decisions, refunds, returns, and follow-up. You'll work across CX, Product, Operations, AI, Payments, Logistics, Trust, and other engineering teams to turn ambiguous customer and business problems into durable systems.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role. You'll lead architecture and delivery across multi-team initiatives, make thoughtful tradeoffs between near-term customer impact and long-term platform health, and raise the quality and effectiveness of the broader engineering organization., * Product and operational judgment: You translate customer needs and business goals into pragmatic technical solutions, balancing customer experience, support quality, cost, trust, and speed.

 * Quality and reliability mindset: You build for observable behavior, safe change, testing, recoverable workflows, and clear system ownership-especially when software takes actions on a customer's behalf.
 * Staff-level leadership: You raise the technical bar through design reviews, mentorship, and clear communication; create alignment without relying on authority; and help teams make sound decisions in ambiguity.
 * Collaborative teammate: You improve the team environment and foster an inclusive, supportive culture.