Senior Engineer - Privacy Engineering
Remote - Americas
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.
Engineering. It’s our DNA.
Engineering isn't a department at Shopify. It's our DNA. The engineers who thrive here care about the code, the system, and the merchants relying on both. They want hard problems and uncomfortable growth. They find solutions without waiting for permission. They ship weekly. They want commerce to work better for everyone. So does our founder, Tobi, who still codes and still shapes where this thing is going.
They're open source nerds. They pair program because two brains write better code than one. New tools, new models, new approaches. They experiment constantly. Most of what's standard here started as someone hacking on something.
They use AI like a keyboard, reflexively and everywhere, to clear the mundane and make room for thinking. And they work in the open. The fastest way to learn here is to watch someone better than you do the work. If that sounds like you, come build with us.
Infrastructure engineering
Infrastructure Engineers at Shopify build and maintain the systems that handle millions of requests per second and billions of dollars in transactions. At that scale, performance gains matter and weak assumptions surface quickly. Your systems power the experience for millions of entrepreneurs and buyers every minute of every day, including peak events like Black Friday.
Engineers at Shopify spend the majority of their time actually writing code to build and improve infrastructure. You’ll solve problems that don’t exist anywhere else, with challenges that push what’s possible. If that lights you up, come build with us.
Mastery-matched compensation.
~Mastery
At Shopify, getting better at your craft and increasing your impact is how you grow. Twice a year, we assess both in our ~Mastery cycle, Shopify’s performance review. Achieving higher ~Mastery is a promotion, and when you earn a promotion your total rewards grow with it. Crafter and manager are equal paths, so you can pursue excellence in the craft you’re best at.
Total Rewards
With Flex Comp, your Rewards Wallet gives you agency over your compensation mix. Adjust your mix of cash, restricted share units, and stock options (including programs like Long-Term Equity)* to where it makes sense for you, and mix it up anytime as life and priorities change. Buying a house? Want more skin in the game? Just experimenting? It’s your call.
* Flex Comp program offerings vary based on location, role, and employment type. Full details are set out in our Terms & Conditions and related plan documents.
Room for the rest of your life.
Flexible work, remote by design
A flexible vacation policy means most Shopifolk can take the vacation days they feel they need to recharge.
If a change of everyday scenery is more your jam, Destination 90 means you can work from (almost) anywhere in the world for 90 days of the year.
Your setup
Your battlestation is your home base. Request the desk, chair, and AV gear you need to get shit done.
Benefits
You need ‘em, we’ve got ‘em. Our health and welfare benefits may include health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance depending on your country. If you’re in a country without a package, you'll receive a monthly allowance. We also offer mental health support for you and your dependents, including immediate and confidential services like counseling and coaching sessions.
Family support
We offer fertility benefits globally, along with paid parental leave to welcome a new family member.
The Life Story is how we understand the themes of your career journey so far, human to human. What you’ve learned, and how you made a difference. Show us the trophies and the bruises: the problems you’ve solved, the challenges you encountered, the decisions you made, and the lessons you learned along the way.
We’re looking for world-class crafters. Crafters obsessed with pursuing excellence in their field. Our craft assessment looks at your personal journey toward mastery, and your potential to go broader and deeper in novel ways.
You’ll start with an online assessment, followed by a craft assessment. Show us what you do best, and how you do it. Shopify’s bar is high, and code wins arguments around here. Let your skills do the talking.
Building on your craft assessment, these interviews dive deeper into your experience and technical aptitude. Depending on the role, this may include technical deep dives focusing on projects you've previously worked on, collaborating in a design critique, exploring a dataset using SQL, or taking the lead on solving a problem with your interviewer as your co-pilot.