Senior Engineer - Events Platform (Americas)
About The RoleThe Identity & Events Platform team sits at the heart of how Shopify moves data. The Event Refinery sub-team is building the next-generation event processing platform that will replace Shopify's legacy eventing infrastructure, becoming the central hub through which all merchant, buyer, and third-party event data flows.The systems this team builds power personalization, recommendations, advertising, internal and external analytics, partner data sharing, and automations. The team is now scaling from roughly 10 billion events per day toward hundreds of billions as Shopify migrates teams onto the new platform. That is the problem you would be joining to help solve.What You'll Work OnDesign, build, and operate high-throughput streaming pipelines that process behavioral event data at massive scaleEnsure compliance and correctness in how event data is enriched, routed, and made available to downstream consumersImprove pipeline reliability and observability including latency, memory optimization, Kafka throughput, and operational healthCollaborate with downstream teams (i.e. personalization, analytics, advertising, etc) to evolve the platform to meet their data needsParticipate in on-call rotations and own the operational health of production systemsWhat We're Looking ForRequirements:Proven experience building and operating high-throughput data processing systems in production at meaningful scaleProficiency in Java or a similar JVM/statically-typed language (Kotlin, Scala, Go, Rust) — our streaming pipelines are written in Java and you should be comfortable working in it or ramping up quickly.Hands-on experience with Apache Flink or a comparable stream processing framework (Dataflow, Spark Streaming)Working knowledge of Apache Kafka including producing, consuming, tuning throughput, and understanding operational behavior under loadOperational mindset — you have been on-call, you think about latency and memory, and you know how to run a production system, not just write code for oneKubernetes familiarity in a production context — running workloads and owning their reliabilityStrong signals we look for:Experience with behavioral, or event data pipelines rather than transactional or reporting-focused dataObservability work including metrics, alerting, tracing, and reducing noise in production systemsLatency optimization and compression work on streaming or storage systemsComplex pipeline work such as aggregations, rollups, and enrichment beyond simple data-in/data-outNice to have:Interest in data privacy and compliance at the processing layer: how to correctly aggregate, route, and act on data given consent and governance signalsExperience at companies or platforms that treat behavioral data as a core productWhat This Role Is NotThis is not a data engineering role in the analytics sense. If SQL is your primary tool, this probably is not the right fit. We are looking for engineers who build the infrastructure that makes data move, not the models or dashboards that sit on top of it.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 ShopifyOpportunity 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 YouMoving 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 everyoneExcel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowthKeep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) changeBring critical thought and opinionPut AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can doEmbrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forwardWork digital-first for your daily workWe may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.