Whatnot

Product Counsel (Director)

San Francisco, CA · Director

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 68 days ago

Machine LearningLLMsComplianceRoadmappingBusiness DevelopmentIntellectual PropertyLeadershipCommunicationProblem Solving

About the role

🚀 Join the Future of Commerce with Whatnot!
We're one of the fastest growing marketplaces and were recently named the #1 Best Startup Employer in America by Forbes.
The ideal candidate is a product counseling generalist who's genuinely curious, moves fast, and knows how to get to yes.

Strategic Leadership & Team Building
Partner with the Deputy General Counsel and senior leadership to shape the long-term strategy, structure, and priorities of the product counsel function. Manage a high performing product counsel team. Manage a high performing product counsel team.
Co-develop playbooks, frameworks, and scalable processes that allow Whatnot's product and engineering teams to move quickly while managing legal risk responsibly.
Product Counseling & Launch Support
Serve as the primary legal point of contact embedded throughout the product development lifecycle, advising Product, Engineering, Design, and Trust & Safety teams from initial concept through feature release and post-launch iteration.
Identify, assess, and drive resolution of legal issues related to privacy, data security, consumer protection, intellectual property, intermediary liability, advertising, and platform regulation.
Lead cross-functional responses to new or amended laws affecting product, partnering with privacy and policy colleagues to manage change effectively.
Advise on data governance, privacy-by-design practices, and data protection impact assessments in connection with new products and features.
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.

Experience at a consumer marketplace, e-commerce, live streaming, social commerce, or two-sided platform company.
Working knowledge of international product regulations, including the EU Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and AI Act.
Familiarity with payments, financial services, or fintech regulation in the context of marketplace or consumer products.
Experience engaging with regulators, government agencies, or in public policy or advocacy contexts.
Monthly allowance for cell phone and internet
Monthly allowance to dogfood the app
Whatnot is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer.
J.D. from an accredited law school and active bar membership (or eligibility to register as in-house counsel) in at least one U.S. state.

Advise on novel and rapidly evolving legal areas, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, recommendation systems, generative content, and live streaming regulation.
Develop and maintain internal legal guidance, training, and educational resources to elevate legal fluency across product and engineering organizations.

The people here are shaping how an entirely new industry develops.
We're looking for a Product Counsel leader to help build and lead Whatnot's product legal function.
We need someone who's seen enough legal terrain across areas such as consumer protection, privacy, marketing, payments, and platform policy to step in quickly, prioritize what actually matters, and give the business clear, actionable guidance.
As a remote co-located team, we're inspired by our values and anchored in hubs across the US, UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, and Australia.

This listing is sourced directly from Whatnot's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.