Notes from the team building the live commerce marketplace.
On Whatnot, inventory does not sit in a static catalogue. Items appear on camera and can sell in seconds. Our engineers write about building for a marketplace that moves this fast.
560K+
live show hours every week
583K
peak viewers in one show
1,000s
live shows at any one time
Highlights
The posts we'd hand a new hire on day oneAI / ML14 Apr 2026
The model is the easy part: Building the LLM Platform at Whatnot
Stas Sajin, Faithful Alabi, Peiyun Zhang, Peicheng Yu
Infrastructure24 Feb 2026
Scaling Whatnot: Behind the Largest Live Shopping Stream in US History
Whatnot Engineering
Marketplace30 Apr 2025
Evolving Feed Ranking at Whatnot
Ford Bohrmann, David Kawashima, Miguel Fernandez-Montes Cuberta
All posts57
2026
Driver Mode: Jumping levels of abstraction with agents
Eli BressertAI / ML
19 Oct 20266 min read
All Dashboards Green, All Screens Black
Karol GilInfrastructure
15 Sept 20265 min read
Every animation was one rename away from breaking a live show
Seth SandlerApps
10 Sept 20268 min read
Whatnot at Snowflake Summit 2026
Whatnot EngineeringData
12 Aug 20263 min read
Building, and Whatnot
Tom Verilliand Whatnot
14 May 202612 min read
The ML Feature Pipeline That Got Slower and No One Noticed
David Kawashima, Miguel Fernandez-Montes Cuberta, Ford BohrmannAI / ML
7 May 20265 min read
The model is the easy part: Building the LLM Platform at Whatnot
Stas Sajin, Faithful Alabi, Peiyun Zhang, Peicheng YuAI / ML
14 Apr 20267 min read
How Whatnot’s Taxonomy Keeps Pace with a Marketplace That Won’t Sit Still
Marcus GeeMarketplace
25 Mar 20265 min read
Your SOPs Are Already Code — You Just Can’t Run Them Yet
Paul GutAI / ML
10 Mar 20266 min read
Scaling Whatnot: Behind the Largest Live Shopping Stream in US History
Whatnot EngineeringInfrastructure
24 Feb 202610 min read
Lessons learned from scaling data scientists with AI
Alice Leach, Anthony Sedarous, Evan Hou, Faithful Alabi, Stephen Bailey, Tanisha KoreData
29 Jan 20266 min read
2025
Whatnot Engineering’s 2025 Blog Highlights
Whatnot Engineeringand Whatnot
18 Dec 20253 min read
Avoiding the trap of Delegates, Action Handlers to the rescue
Abraham HuntApps
3 Dec 20253 min read
Eliminating GraphQL Schema Bloat with AI (So You Don’t Have To)
Nikhil PatelAI / ML
18 Nov 20255 min read
From low code to vibe code: how we bridged the gap for internal tools
Ty GiacaloneAI / ML
4 Nov 20254 min read
The New User Dilemma: Why We Killed Our Heuristics (& What We Built Instead)
Miguel Fernandez-Montes Cuberta, David Kawashima, Ford BohrmannMarketplace
3 Sept 20257 min read
The AI Thread at ElixirConf EU 2025: Highlights from Kraków
Whatnot EngineeringAI / ML
17 June 20254 min read
6x Faster ML Inference: Why Online >> Batch
Faithful Alabi, Jacob BurkettAI / ML
27 May 20258 min read
Evolving Feed Ranking at Whatnot
Ford Bohrmann, David Kawashima, Miguel Fernandez-Montes CubertaMarketplace
30 Apr 20256 min read
2024
Whatamix: Blendable feed construction
Grace Li, Crystal Lee, Jared CasaleMarketplace
7 Nov 202411 min read
Preparing the Marketplace for Game Time
Rafael GonzaqueInfrastructure
12 Sept 20246 min read
Expecting the unexpected: Managing 3x traffic surges at Whatnot
Karol GilInfrastructure
17 July 20249 min read
Whatnot’s Data-Driven Approach to Scalability & Reliability for Big On-Platform Events
Andrey KravtsovInfrastructure
18 June 20248 min read
Powering real-time magic moments through notifications
Ronnie Gilkey, Brian TombulMarketplace
16 Apr 20248 min read
A Deepdive Debugging WebP Image Support on Android
Laurence MullerApps
6 Mar 20247 min read
Moving Slow to Move Fast: Real-time Chat Rate Limiting
Lauren ZhouMarketplace
27 Feb 20246 min read
2023
The Top Whatnot Engineering Blog Posts of 2023
Whatnot Engineeringand Whatnot
20 Dec 20231 min read
Multicasting: Growing the Whatnot Community Across Platforms
Chaitra Ambadipudi, Cameron MatsuiMarketplace
29 Nov 20237 min read
Managing a Dynamic dbt Project
Alice LeachData
14 Nov 202310 min read
Coupon Crafting Inside Livestreams and Auctions
Wen Xiong, Brandon LeeMarketplace
10 Oct 20234 min read
Enhancing Search Using Large Language Models
Yumeng Tao, Grace LiMarketplace
27 Sept 20235 min read
How Whatnot Utilizes Generative AI to Enhance Trust and Safety
Charudatta (CD) WadMarketplace
21 Sept 20235 min read
Migrating iOS GitHub Actions to Self-Hosted M1 Mac Runners
Adrian ŚliwaApps
23 Aug 20235 min read
Whatnot Android Meetup in Poland
Whatnot EngineeringApps
4 Aug 20231 min read
Data Contracts in the Modern Data Stack
Zack KleinData
13 July 20237 min read
Building Offers In Lives
Shreyas HirdayMarketplace
29 June 20236 min read
Building Whatnot’s First Ads Product — Boosted Livestreams
Steven BourkeMarketplace
26 May 20235 min read
Recap: Whatnot at Data Council 2023
Whatnot EngineeringData
18 May 20232 min read
Building the Seller Analytics Dashboard
Kendall Barber-Mayo, Edelita ValdezData
9 May 20236 min read
Empowering Engineers: How Dogfooding Led to Pinch to Zoom for Live Video Shopping
Seth SandlerApps
17 Apr 20233 min read
Total (e)Clips of the Heart: Building Clipping to Hold Onto Livestreams Forever
Victoria Kwong, Aiden Song, Vincent TianMarketplace
22 Mar 20235 min read
Whatnot and Kumo.AI Leaders Discuss the Latest in Machine Learning [Videos]
Whatnot EngineeringAI / ML
16 Mar 20232 min read
Same Data, Sturdier Frame: Layering in Dimensional Data Modeling at Whatnot
Alice Leach, Lalita Yang, Stephen BaileyData
13 Mar 20237 min read
Signed, Sealed, Delivered — It’s Shipped
Blake MorganInfrastructure
23 Feb 20237 min read
Building a Startup Growth Team From Scratch
Jeff Changand Whatnot
6 Feb 20233 min read
Peeking Behind the Curtain of Secret Max Bid
Pranav VadrevuMarketplace
12 Jan 20237 min read
2022
The top Whatnot engineering blog posts of 2022
Whatnot Engineeringand Whatnot
27 Dec 20221 min read
My Experience as One of Whatnot’s First Engineering Interns
Julia Zhangand Whatnot
14 Dec 20226 min read
Refactoring Authentication at Whatnot
Bartek Hyży, Rafal Studnicki, Enze LiInfrastructure
9 Dec 20228 min read
Harnessing the Power of Community Through Hypergrowth
Ludo Antonovand Whatnot
11 Nov 20223 min read
How Chat Tagging Became a Growth Lever
Aiden SongMarketplace
28 Oct 20223 min read
Creating a Lane of Our Own for iOS Automation
Alex ChaseApps
20 Oct 20225 min read
Navigating Android’s UI Landscape
Andy ByrnesApps
12 Oct 20225 min read
Scaling our Data Stack with Kafka and Real-Time Stream Processing
Zack KleinData
22 Sept 20226 min read
The Power of Dogfooding at Whatnot
Evan Houand Whatnot
15 Sept 20224 min read
Ship It: Building our Logistics Platform
Tyler LaredoMarketplace
6 Sept 20226 min read
Open Letter on Scalability & Reliability
Blake MorganInfrastructure
30 Aug 20227 min read