About the role
As a Senior Engineer on the Privacy Engineering team, you'll work on systems that directly protect the privacy rights of millions of merchants and their customers. The work is technically challenging — solving ambiguous problems across multiple systems where correctness has legal consequences. It's operationally demanding (on-call, incident response, compliance deadlines) and genuinely impactful (the systems you build have real legal and human consequences if they fail).
About the team
Privacy Engineering is the team that makes privacy work at scale — not as a policy checkbox, but as real infrastructure. We build and own the systems that let Shopify reliably handle millions of data subject requests across every surface of the platform: DSAR orchestration, PII redaction, compliance tooling, and the event pipelines that enforce privacy by default.
When a merchant, or their customer requests their data be deleted, when someone opts out of data sale, or when a regulatory deadline hits — our systems are what make it happen. The problems are genuinely hard, the consequences are real, and the work has direct visibility into Shopify's company priorities.
We sit at the intersection of engineering, data, and compliance, coordinating across Identity, Data Platform, Data Governance, Streaming Platform, and Legal. This is a team that ships. We bias toward action, iterate quickly, and trust each other to own outcomes.
We use AI tools extensively — Claude Code and Pi are part of our daily workflow for code generation, context gathering, PR reviews, and system investigation.
What you'll do
Build and improve privacy processing systems — Design, implement, and operate the systems that process erasure requests, opt-outs, access requests, and objections across Shopify's platform. You’ll work in Ruby/Rails, BigQuery, BigTable, Kafka, and Terraform.
Own problems end-to-end — From identifying the issue, through design and implementation, to production deployment and operational monitoring. We don't throw things over the wall.
Write tech designs — When a feature or system change requires design thinking, document the problem, approach, trade-offs, and plan. Drive the design to alignment with stakeholders.
Drive projects to completion — Champion or contribute to projects that ship on time. Break down ambiguous problems into well-scoped issues. Communicate progress clearly.
Operate what you build — Participate in on-call rotations. Respond to incidents. Build observability and alerting so problems are caught before they escalate.
Raise the bar for the team — Thorough code reviews, knowledge sharing, mentoring, and proactive improvements to the codebase. Leave every area of code better than you found it.
Navigate cross-team dependencies — Privacy touches everything. You'll work with Identity, Data Platform, Data Governance, Legal, and Compliance to drive alignment and ship solutions that work across organizational boundaries.
What we're looking for
Solves ambiguous problems with deep understanding of dependencies. You can take a vague problem ("we need stateful GPC processing" or "this redaction pipeline can't handle tables over 4000 partitions") and drive it to a concrete solution — understanding the systems involved, the trade-offs, and the downstream implications.
Ships incrementally. You bias toward action. You ship the smallest valuable thing first, validate it, and iterate. You don't spend weeks investigating before showing progress.
Writes code that others can understand, operate, and maintain. Your PRs are well-structured, your tests are meaningful, and your design decisions are documented. You think about the person who will maintain this code in two years.
Exhibits good judgment. You know when to dig deep and when to move on. You know when to reach out for help and when to figure it out yourself. You know when a 90% solution shipped today is better than a 100% solution shipped next week.
Takes operational responsibility. You don't just build systems — you operate them. You respond to pages, investigate alerts, and care about the health of production systems.
Is reliable, communicative and collaborative. You review code thoroughly, share what you learn, and help your teammates grow.
Requirements
Strong software engineering fundamentals — you've built, scaled, and operated web applications in production and hold a high bar for code quality and system design.
Extreme ownership — you see problems through to full resolution, including cleanup, tech debt, and operational follow-through. Not just the interesting algorithmic core.
Openness to working in a Ruby/Rails codebase — you don't need to know it coming in, but you need to be willing to go deep on it.
Genuine curiosity about the privacy domain — you don't need to be an expert on day one, but you must be deeply interested in solving the technical challenges of this problem space.
Fluency with AI coding tools as part of your daily workflow — you use them to move faster without sacrificing quality, and you review AI-generated output with the same rigor as hand-written code.
Nice to haves
Experience with privacy/compliance systems, GDPR/CCPA, or data subject request processing
Experience with BigQuery, BigTable, or large-scale data processing
Familiarity with event-driven architectures (Kafka)
Previous work in regulated domains where correctness has legal consequences
At Shopify, we pride ourselves on moving quickly—not just in shipping, but in our hiring process as well. If you're ready to apply, please be prepared to interview with us within the week. Our goal is to complete the entire interview loop within 30 days. You will be expected to complete a live pair programming session, come prepared with your own IDE.
About Shopify
Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.
This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.
About you
Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.
Before you apply, consider if you can:
- Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
- Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
- Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
- Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
- Bring critical thought and opinion
- Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do
- Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
- Work digital-first for your daily work
We may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.
We hire people, not resumes. If you think you’re right for the role, apply now.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, experience building and operating web applications in production, willingness to work in Ruby/Rails, curiosity about privacy domain, and fluency with AI coding tools.
Key Responsibilities
- building privacy systems
- operating production systems
- mentoring team members
Skills & Tools
Ruby, Rails, BigQuery, BigTable, Kafka, Terraform, Claude Code, Pi
Job Details
- Category: Software Development
- Seniority: Senior Level
- Commitment: Full Time
- Workplace: Remote — North America or South America
- Languages: English
About Shopify
A global commerce platform that empowers entrepreneurs and enterprises to start and scale their businesses. — Industry: Information Technology