Senior Infrastructure Engineer - Streaming Services/Materialization Platform (Americas)

About the role Senior Infrastructure Engineer Streaming Services/Materialization Platform About the role Every write to Shopify's core databases—orders, inventory, product data—flows through the CDC and materialization pipelines this team owns. Downstream, that data powers Shop's delivery guarantees, merchant-facing search, and the LLM agents that answer questions about live commerce state. You'll evolve and operate this platform: the throughput it sustains, the freshness it can promise, and the databases it reads from. This role combines development and operations. You'll build and run the systems you work on; lead complex features to production, work directly with users, strengthen the resiliency of the systems you own, work with vendor and open source teams. You’ll navigate ambiguous technical problems together with the team—prototyping solutions, taking calculated risks, and building momentum when the path forward isn't fully clear. What you'll do Build and operate Shopify's CDC and Data Materialization platforms, ensuring they meet the throughput and reliability demands of Shopify's event-driven systems Solve complex production issues at scale and participate in on-call rotation Contribute back to open source and vendor codebases Lead execution on impactful projects in the team's charter Use and shape how the team uses AI for design, coding, and collaboration Collaborate cross-functionally with teams across Shopify, and external vendor dev teams Drive for engineering excellence, balancing operational strength and shipping features Communicate with diverse audiences (cross-team RFCs, leadership briefs, non-technical stakeholders) What you'll bring You don't have to fully cover this list. Ideally: Experience in (or strong interest to learn) streaming (Debezium, Kafka), processing (Flink) or database (Yugabyte, MySQL, BigQuery) technologies. Bonus: you've built or operated a CDC pipeline, worked inside a distributed database, or debugged a streaming system under production load. Good coding patterns in any language (Java or Go ideal) Experience operating large distributed systems at scale Bias to action and ability to move forward when faced with ambiguous problems Experience leading projects—scoping and structuring work, building momentum behind decisions, driving execution. 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. This role requires on-call work. Ready to build the backbone of Shopify? Join the team that's making commerce better for everyone. 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.