Principal engineer – Shopify Ecosystem

Responsibilities

• Ship meaningful improvements to the AssetLink app, personally. You’ll write production code, make architectural calls, and own end-to-end delivery for the highest-impact adoption blockers.
• Make AssetLink feel Shopify-native: embedded Admin UX expectations, app architecture patterns, APIs/webhooks, permissions, and operational readiness that meet Plus / enterprise standards.
• Work closely with our partners at Shopify and key ecosystem technology and service partners to align on roadmaps, integration patterns, and joint customer needs with a bias toward what can be shipped.
• Run tight feedback loops with Plus merchants, enterprise brands, and agencies to turn real implementation pain into scoped work, shipped improvements, and repeatable enablement.
• Own reliability and KTLO: observability, runbooks, safe rollout strategies, and supportability so the app scales without becoming an escalation magnet.
• What you’ll own:
• End-to-end technical ownership of Cloudinary’s AssetLink Shopify app, from architecture and development through releases, upgrade paths, monitoring, and ongoing operations.
• Shopify integration architecture and roadmap, defining the technical direction for Admin extensions, theme components, and workflow/automation touchpoints that drive adoption.
• Customer/partner technical leadership. Lead technical discovery, architecture workshops, and design reviews with strategic customers, agencies, and Shopify/partner engineering teams.
• Field-to-product signal. Translating ecosystem feedback into crisp requirements and tradeoffs for Product and Engineering; advocate for the right platform investments that unlock Shopify-scale integrations.
• Ecosystem enablement. Produce reference architectures, implementation guides, and agency playbooks that reduce time-to-value and make Cloudinary repeatable in Shopify builds.
• Team evolution. Operate as the single technical owner initially, and help define the roles, operating model, and hiring plan as adoption grows.
• Success metrics:
• AssetLink adoption and activation: growth in installed/active stores and usage of core workflows (linking Cloudinary assets to Products/Collections/Blogs and importing assets into Shopify).
• Time-to-value: reduced time from install → connected account → first successful production workflow (including agency-led implementations).
• Revenue and pipeline influence: measurable impact on Plus / enterprise opportunities where AssetLink credibility and Shopify-native architecture accelerate deal velocity or unlock expansion.
• Reliability and operations: improved error rates, webhook/job health, and reduced support/PS.
• Partner and agency enablement: increased number of agencies successfully implementing AssetLink.

About You

• 10+ years as a senior software engineer / architect or technical leader, with strong customer-facing experience, and you still ship.
• 7+ years of JavaScript/node.js
• Deep familiarity with Shopify app development and ecosystem patterns: embedded apps, Admin UX expectations, API/webhook design, auth, rate limits, and operational realities.
• Proven experience building integrations or platform extensions that need to work across many customer environments (and stay reliable at enterprise scale).
• Strong product instincts: you can turn messy external feedback into shippable scope, make tradeoffs, and drive outcomes without hiding behind process.
• Executive presence with technical depth: credible with partner engineering teams and equally effective with business stakeholders.
• Ability to travel occasionally (typically under 10%) for a small number of high-leverage partner and customer moments.
• Behaviors & leadership:
• Operates as a full owner: drives clarity, simplifies tradeoffs, and pushes toward measurable adoption outcomes.
• Pragmatic builder: ships what validates value, invests in robustness where it protects customers, and cuts everything else.
• Leads through influence: aligns Product, R&D, Partnerships, Sales, Solutions/PS, Marketing/DevRel, and Support around clear priorities and durable decisions.