Principal engineer – Shopify Ecosystem Full Time NEW

Cloudinary is the Image and Video API platform trusted by millions of developers and over 10,000 companies worldwide. Our powerful tools fuel websites to be faster, richer in user engagement, and breakthrough creativity. With a growing suite of products that support everything from developer efficiency to brand storytelling, Cloudinary is becoming the visual layer of the web.

Cloudinary has a globally distributed team across North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific, united by a shared commitment to building smart, scalable technology and a culture rooted in humility, curiosity, and collaboration. At Cloudinary, we celebrate Life & Work. We believe in healthy growth, working with purpose, and creating meaningful value. If you’re looking for a place where your voice matters and your work truly makes an impact, this may be the opportunity for you.

We’re hiring a customer and partner-facing technical leader to own the tech side of Cloudinary’s Shopify ecosystem team. The Lead Solutions Architect, Shopify Ecosystem is the technical authority that sits at the intersection of Shopify merchants, agencies, strategic tech partners, and Cloudinary’s platform. In this role you will be responsible for building and evolving Cloudinary’s AssetLink Shopify app, representing ecosystem needs internally, and translating product-market fit into repeatable Shopify adoption.

This role is a highly hands-on IC with outsized influence (reporting to the GM, Shopify). As the motion proves out, you’ll help define what will become a small ecosystem engineering / architecture function, hiring and leading a team over time, or via managing outsourced development resources.

Why this role matters:

Shopify is one of the most important ecosystems for Cloudinary’s commerce growth. AssetLink, our Shopify app, is the product surface area that makes Cloudinary “real” to Shopify customers: an embedded, Shopify-native way to connect a Cloudinary media library to Shopify workflows (Admin, themes, and automation) and scale consistent, high-performing visual experiences across stores and channels.

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

We have you in mind. As an employee, you will experience many benefits, including:

Awesome technology

Top-talent peers

Robust vacation & wellness policy

Annual development stipend

Catered lunches or a food stipend

Cloudinary is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer dedicated to pursuing a diverse workforce.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.