Lead Shopify Developer
Department: Development
Location: Global / Remote
Reports To: Technical Team Lead
Position Summary
The Lead Shopify Developer serves as the primary technical steward for Ecommerce storefront experiences, guiding engineering work across the entire project lifecycle. You will act as the vital link between client objectives, creative design, and technical delivery, ensuring that business requirements result in solutions that are functional, scalable, and maintainable.
This role requires a mix of technical mastery and proactive leadership. You will be responsible for defining technical direction, organizing implementation through strategic sprint planning, and safeguarding the long-term sustainability of the codebase. You are an enabling leader, dedicated to supporting your team, removing bottlenecks, and fostering developer growth.
Organizational Values
Our Core Values are the foundation of our team. We expect our team members to uphold these values at work and within the community.
- Relentlessly Client-Centric - We prioritize our clients' results ahead of everything. We make decisions from our clients' POV.
- Trusted and Consultative - We earn our clients' trust by guiding and consulting them through difficult decisions. We do what we say we're going to do, internally and externally.
- Collaborative, Approachable, and Authentic - We operate as one team, internally and externally. We're empathetic with one another and our clients. We're kind in all circumstances.
- Adaptable and Constantly Learning - And have fun doing it. We deliver work we're proud of with excellence and care. We constantly strive for our clients and team members.
Passionate to Achieve and Win - We learn quickly and create positive change.
What You Will Do
- Act as the primary technical authority during client-facing calls and discovery workshops to provide technical guidance and evaluate feasibility, surfacing complexities and risks early to ensure the budgetary fit and viability of deliverables.
- Contribute to technical specifications and review designs to ensure consistent system architecture.
- Work cross-functionally with Architects, Project Managers, Business Analysts, Designers, and Clients from kickoff to deployment.
- Assume ownership of the sprint process and ceremonies, managing team velocity to ensure timelines are met as scope evolves.
- Drive project engineering quality by establishing standards and leading code reviews to ensure responsiveness, ADA compliance (WCAG), performance (Web Vitals), and SEO optimization.
- Safeguard design intent by translating Figma prototypes into high-fidelity storefronts, ensuring technical implementation aligns with Atomic Design principles and brand guidelines.
- Support and mentor the development team through constructive feedback, strategic guidance, and the proactive removal of technical blockers to maintain project momentum.
- Actively contribute to company-wide engineering best practices and proactively identify opportunities for process improvements that enhance engineering efficiency and team scalability.
What You Bring to the Table
- At least 5+ years of experience in Ecommerce web development, with a minimum of 3+ years specifically within the Shopify Plus platform.
- Expert-level proficiency in Shopify Liquid, vanilla JavaScript (ES6+), Web Components, CSS preprocessors/frameworks (Sass, Tailwind) and proficiency with the Shopify APIs and the CLI.
- Advanced experience with web accessibility (WCAG), performance budgeting, and technical SEO best practices (including structured data/JSON-LD and site speed).
- Proficiency in leveraging AI-assisted development tools to accelerate development workflows and experience leading AI-enabled engineering teams to drive efficiency.
- Experience developing custom Shopify Apps using the Shopify App Bridge, GraphQL Admin API, and modern frameworks (Node.js, Remix) while managing app extensions and webhook-driven logic.
- Working knowledge of React.js and modern build tools (Vite, Webpack, Gulp), particularly for headless commerce initiatives (Shopify Hydrogen and Oxygen) or custom web applications.
- Working knowledge of Cloud Platforms, Git and Jira.
How You Lead & Work
- Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate technical trade-offs effectively to both technical teams and non-technical business stakeholders.
- Ability to identify implementation risks early and the comfort level to escalate concerns to leadership.
- Strong sense of ownership over project outcomes; ability to deliver projects on-time and on-budget through disciplined time management and task prioritization.
- Confidence in managing upwards, providing feedback to Technology team leadership, and taking initiative in your organizational and project-based roles.
- Dedicated to the improvement of your craft with a positive outlook and a readiness to welcome and apply constructive feedback to future performance.
This job description does not list all duties of the job. Employees may be asked by management to perform other duties as needed. The Company reserves the right to revise this job description at any time. This job description is not a contract for employment and does not infringe upon the Company’s at will employment status.
Skills Required
- 5+ years of experience in Ecommerce web development
- 3+ years within the Shopify Plus platform
- Expert-level proficiency in Shopify Liquid and vanilla JavaScript
- Advanced experience with web accessibility and technical SEO
- Experience developing custom Shopify Apps
What We Do
As a full-service digital commerce agency, CQL designs retail and B2B experiences and engineers the technologies to fuel them. CQL's aim is to design and build truly inspiring eCommerce websites and applications for our clients and their customers. CQL has a collaborative team of cross-disciplined professionals driven each day by their desire to transform complex challenges into compelling solutions. CQL Offers: + OVER 29 YEARS as a Thriving eCommerce Agency + COMMERCE EXPERTS from digital brand experiences to back-end integrations with your CMS, OMS, PIM, ERP, and other custom solutions + FULL-SERVICE AGENCY working in cross-discipline teams to deliver strategy, branding, UX design, and custom dev solutions + PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN approach to client partnerships provide ongoing support, eCommerce strategy, innovative solutions, and performance optimization + PLATFORM EXPERTS guide project strategy and make the most of your platform implementation or stabilization. Platforms include Shopify Plus, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, BigCommerce, and more!








