Director of Engineering

Ritual; Los Angeles (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Ritual is seeking a Director of Engineering to own the Shopify platform that powers ritual.com. You will lead the in-house engineering and QA teams, own the technical roadmap for the platform, and partner with product to drive end-to-end solutions that connect catalog, subscriptions, fulfillment, and finance.

You’ll work across growth, support, supply chain, and accounting teams to maintain platform coherence, guide Liquid development, and evolve integrations with external systems while

Qualifications

• 5+ years engineering management experience overseeing delivery and quality across a team.
• Experience integrating Shopify with operational and financial systems.
• Strong fluency with Shopify Admin and Storefront APIs, webhooks, and app extensions.

Responsibilities

• Own the Shopify platform end to end, including catalog data, store settings, markets, and checkout configuration.
• Lead in-house engineering and QA teams; define the technical roadmap in partnership with product.
• Represent engineering with senior stakeholders and ensure platform coherence as it scales.
• Oversee integrations connecting Shopify to fulfillment, accounting, and marketing systems.
• Mentor engineers and QA staff; drive code quality, reviews, and production issue resolution.
• Lead AI-native development practices with tools like Cursor and Linear to improve delivery.

Skills

Engineering management

Shopify

Liquid theme development

Backend platform ownership

APIs & webhooks

Platform integrations

AI development tools

Tools

Shopify App Extensions

Shopify Admin API

Job description

Job Responsibilities

• We're hiring a Director of Engineering to own the Shopify platform that runs ritual.com
• This is bigger than the storefront: Shopify is the commercial operating system of our business, and this role owns it end to end—catalog and store configuration, the app stack, subscription commerce, and the integrations that connect the store to fulfillment, operations, finance, and marketing
• You'll lead our in-house engineering and QA team, own the technical roadmap for the platform in partnership with product, and represent engineering with senior stakeholders across the company
• Critically, this role sits at the intersection of every team that plugs into the Shopify platform: growth and retention marketing (pixels, conversion tracking, catalog syncing, lifecycle and CRM integrations), customer support (helpdesk and customer data tooling), supply chain and logistics (fulfillment, order and inventory flows), and accounting (revenue recognition and finance data)
• Each of these teams depends on the platform working for them—you'll be their technical leader, translating their needs into sound integrations and keeping the whole system coherent as it grows
• This is a platform-owner role with a leadership mandate
• Our engineering team already carries strong Liquid theme development skills—your job is to direct that work and hold the quality bar, while personally owning the back-end and administrative depth of the platform: how the catalog is modeled, how subscriptions are configured, how orders flow to fulfillment, and how revenue data reaches finance
• You won't be heads-down on feature work day to day, but you'll review PRs, and you can run the codebase, debug a production issue, ship a quick fix, or delegate with precision
• We're an AI-forward engineering team—AI development tools like Cursor and Linear are central to how we plan, build, and ship—and we're looking for a leader who works this way natively and raises the bar for how the whole team leverages them
• Own the Shopify platform end to end, including catalog setup and product data architecture, store settings, markets and checkout configuration, and overall store health. Establish clear, scalable platform standards and help the broader team understand how and why the Shopify instance is configured
• Lead subscription commerce configuration through Recharge, overseeing plans and pricing, discount logic, customer portal experiences, and the connections between subscriptions, promotions, and international markets
• Build, maintain, and evolve integrations connecting Shopify with critical business systems, including supply chain and logistics platforms, fulfillment, order and inventory synchronization, accounting and revenue recognition workflows, webhooks, APIs, and custom applications
• Manage and continuously improve the Shopify app ecosystem, evaluating third‑party solutions across functionality, performance, security, privacy, and cost. Partner with stakeholders to make thoughtful build‑v‑…
• Guide Shopify theme development by partnering with an experienced engineering team with strong Liquid expertise. Collaborate with digital product management and web design to bring new features and experiences to life, while contributing to code reviews and fostering a high standard for performance, accessibility, maintainability, and polish
• Shape the storefront as a flexible content platform, owning metaobject and metafield data models, the CMS experience for content editors (including the blog), and a reusable library of sections and components that empowers non-engineering teams to create and update pages efficiently
• Partner closely with growth and retention marketing as a technical leader, overseeing the implementation and health of marketing pixels and conversion tracking, product catalog synchronization with advertising platforms, lifecycle and CRM integrations, and the data flows that support them. Help teams identify and execute effective technical solutions that support growth and retention goals
• Connect teams across the business through the platform, partnering with customer support, CRM, supply chain and logistics, accounting, and other stakeholders who rely on Shopify and its surrounding systems. Help ensure customer, order, subscription, and financial data flows reliably to the teams that need it, while representing cross‑functional needs in engineering planning and roadmap discussions
• Champion web accessibility for ritual.com, helping maintain the storefront in alignment with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Embed accessibility into design reviews and definitions of done, and coordinate the annual manual accessibility audit with an external partner—from planning and triage through remediation and follow‑through in the sprint cycle
• Help lead an AI‑native development practice, using modern AI development tools such as Cursor and Linear to support thoughtful, efficient delivery. Establish team practices for using AI‑assisted development responsibly, including standards for code quality, review, testing, security, and safe deployment
• Facilitate the team’s sprint cycles from planning through delivery, helping groom and scope work, manage capacity, clarify priorities, and foster accountability across engineering and cross‑functional partners contributing to the roadmap. Create the conditions for teams to deliver high‑quality work predictably and sustainably
• Lead, hire, and develop the engineering and QA organization, supporting an in‑house team of front‑end engineers and a QA function led by a Senior QA Manager. Foster a collaborative, inclusive team culture and take shared ownership of quality and delivery across the full lifecycle, from planning and development through testing and release
• Build and manage strong vendor and partner relationships across the platform ecosystem, including app providers, agencies, and audit partners. Oversee budgets and contracts, set clear expectations, and create productive partnerships focused on measurable outcomes and long‑term value

Leadership Attributes

• Detail‑Oriented: You care about the details—because you know they add up to better, more trustworthy outcomes
• Systems Thinker: You recognize patterns, anticipate downstream impact, and build for scalability
• Self‑Starter: You take initiative and move work forward independently. You bring fresh thinking that aligns with the team’s goals
• Operational Excellence: You build and manage processes that make things run smoothly, reliably, and at scale
• Empowered Collaborator: You work across teams with trust and respect. You challenge ideas constructively, co‑create solutions, and move projects forward through collective effort
• Clear Communicator: You express ideas clearly and thoughtfully—whether in writing, speaking, or storytelling. You tailor messages to your audience and make complex concepts easy to understand
• Technical Acumen: You bring deep engineering knowledge and apply it to real‑world challenges
• Proactive: You anticipate needs, take ownership, and ask for support when needed. You keep momentum even without constant direction
• Curious Thinker: You're naturally inquisitive and always eager to learn more. You ask questions, explore new ideas, and seek to understand the why.
• Resourceful (Scrappy): You figure things out with limited resources. You take initiative and find creative paths forward

Required Experience

• 5+ years of engineering management experience—you know how to hire, set expectations, review work, develop engineers, and hold a quality bar across a team, and you've owned delivery outcomes at the team level, not just the ticket level
• Experience integrating Shopify with operational and financial systems
• Proven back-end/platform ownership: fluency with the Shopify Admin and Storefront APIs, webhooks, and app extensions, and hands‑on experience building and maintaining custom Shopify apps and integrations that stay reliable over time
• Strong Liquid theme development fluency
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years of deep Shopify platform experience spanning administration and development: catalog and product data architecture, store and checkout configuration, markets, and app stack management for a high‑volume brand
• Comfort operating as the technical hub for many non‑technical teams at once—marketing, customer support, supply chain, accounting—translating between business goals and technical constraints, and managing competing integration needs without losing platform coherence
• Hands‑on experience supporting growth and retention marketing as a technical resource. You're comfortable leading these conversations, not just executing tickets
• Strong agile fundamentals: you've run sprint cycles, groomed backlogs, scoped and estimated tickets, and managed delivery accountability across a team and its stakeholders
• Experience managing external contractors or agencies alongside an in‑house team, including scoping their work, reviewing deliverables, and holding an outside partner to the same quality bar

We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every qualification listed above. We're committed to building a diverse team and recognize that skills can be developed in many different ways