Taxonomist

🚀 Whatnot

Whatnot is the largest livestream shopping platform in North America and Europe to buy, sell, and discover the things you love. We’re building the future of ecommerce, bringing together community, shopping and entertainment. We are committed to our values, and as a remote co-located team, we operate out of hubs within the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, and Germany today.

We’re innovating in the fast-paced world of live auctions from fashion, beauty, electronics to collectibles like trading cards, comic books, and even live plants. Whatnot has something for everyone.

And, we’re growing. Whatnot has been one of the fastest growing marketplaces and we’re hiring forward-thinking problem solvers across all functional areas.

💻 Role

The Discovery team at Whatnot is responsible for building the best user experience for finding and engaging with the most relevant content on the platform: shows, products and sellers in the community. To achieve our goals, we are passionate about understanding, building and maintaining a healthy ecosystem, where buyers find engaging content and sellers thrive with their business. We focus on a wide variety of problems: feeds, taxonomy, browse experience, search and recommendations algorithms, as well as content understanding. 

What you'll do as a Taxonomist:

• Define and develop a comprehensive taxonomy strategy that aligns with our category and country growth strategy
• Work with product management, engineering, design, data science, and the broader team to guide our product roadmap and its impact and reliance on taxonomy structures
• Design and create adaptable classifications that can handle diverse data use scenarios
• Inform taxonomy tooling and modification processes, as well as champion best practices around the company 
• Advise and contribute to work involving LLMs, generative AI, chatbots, and other language based technology
• Ensure our taxonomies and ontologies are useful for both the human beings that use it (Buyers and Sellers) and the machines that help facilitate these relationships

Team members in this role are required to be within commuting distance of our Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA, or New York, NY hubs.

👋 You

Curious about who thrives at Whatnot? We’ve found that low ego, a growth mindset, and leaning into action and high impact goes a long way here.

As our Taxonomist, you should have 5 to 7 years of taxonomy and ontology experience, with:

• Strong cross-functional competencies to effectively collaborate with product management, design, engineering, marketing, and other partners 
• Experience creating and communicating technical requirements to engineering teams that create delightful experience for user
• Demonstrated bias for action in an fluid work environment
• Industry standard knowledge for taxonomy and ontology tooling
• Bachelor's Degree in Library Science, Information Systems, Linguistics or equivalent professional experience. Masters Degrees are preferred.

💰Compensation

$180,000/year to $230,000/year + benefits + equity

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.

🎁 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 on both food and 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
• 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.

💛 EOE

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.