eBay Classifieds

Context

Two years as software engineer inside the eBay Classifieds Group umbrella, working across the regional consumer brands rather than against a single product surface. The portfolio spanned Vivanuncios in Latin America, Gumtree in Singapore and South Africa, and the US classifieds operation — four markets, four distinct local brands, one shared platform mandate.

The mandate was branding unification: ship a coherent product surface across markets without flattening the regional brand identities that local users already trusted. The tenure also overlapped the Close5 era — eBay's mobile-first classifieds bet that was eventually sunsetted — and the broader Classifieds Group consolidation work that played out across that period.

Approach

Branding unification across regional brands isn't a redesign — it's a systems problem. The work centered on building shared foundations that each regional brand could specialize without re-inventing the core.

• Component primitives and data models held centrally. Listing structure, search and filter contracts, fulfillment plumbing, and the parts of the experience where consistency compounded — modeled once, parameterized per market.
• Brand specialization owned locally. Visual identity, copy register, regional category taxonomies, and the flows where local trust mattered more than central consistency — left to the market teams to keep shaping.
• Engineering tradeoff as the core decision. How much can be templated centrally versus what must remain locally owned? The answer compounded over time — the brands that emerged from the unification (Vivanuncios, Gumtree SG, Gumtree ZA) are still operating nine years later.

Credits

Co-creator on Vivanuncios with Angel Pantoja and on Close5 with David Peralta Miranda. The Classifieds Group work happened at the intersection of regional product teams across MX, US, SG and ZA — the kind of project that doesn't ship without that cross-team trust.