Lead Developer Advocate (San Francisco) (San Francisco)

Shopify; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Shopify in San Francisco is seeking a Developer Advocate to lead our strategy for developers and AI applications, partnering with founders and engineers to put it into practice and help teams build on Shopify.

You will grow the developer community through events, workshops, and office hours, ship reusable code and docs, and collaborate with Product and Engineering to scale engagement across the ecosystem.

Qualifications

• Experience building a developer advocacy, developer relations, or technical ecosystem program end to end—strategy through execution.
• Hands-on engineering or solutions background: shipping software, integrating APIs, implementing auth, and debugging production issues.
• Experience building with AI development tools, and the ability to learn unfamiliar codebases fast.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategy: Prioritize target developers, use cases, and communities. Define how we reach them and help them build on Shopify.
• Build relationships: Work with accelerators, investors, and developer platforms to meet teams early, understand what they’re building, and help them choose Shopify.
• Grow the community: Run meetups, hackathons, workshops, and office hours. Share code, demos, and lessons in public, and keep momentum between events.
• Build alongside developers: Pair with founders and engineers to integrate Shopify, clear technical blockers, and ship to production.
• Improve the developer experience: Turn recurring work into reusable code, tools, and docs. Channel developer feedback to Product and Engineering to fix common problems.
• Measure and scale: Track engagement and adoption, A/B test approaches, double down on what works, and recommend skills and hires as the program grows.

Skills

Developer advocacy program

Hands-on engineering background

AI development tools experience

Developer credibility

Community building

Bias for action and persistence

Job description

About The Role

Help make Shopify the commerce layer for AI applications. Based in San Francisco, you'll lead our developer advocacy strategy and work directly with founders and engineers to put it into practice. You'll build relationships, grow the developer community and help teams build and launch products powered by Shopify.

What You’ll Do

• Set the strategy: Prioritize target developers, use cases, and communities. Define how we reach them and help them build on Shopify.
• Build relationships: Work with accelerators, investors, and developer platforms to meet teams early, understand what they’re building, and help them choose Shopify.
• Grow the community: Run meetups, hackathons, workshops, and office hours. Share code, demos, and lessons in public, and keep momentum between events.
• Build alongside developers: Pair with founders and engineers to integrate Shopify, clear technical blockers, and ship to production. Pull in Product, Engineering, or Partnerships when needed.
• Improve the developer experience: Turn recurring work into reusable code, tools, and docs. Channel developer feedback to Product and Engineering to fix common problems.
• Measure and scale: Track engagement and adoption, A/B test approaches, double down on what works, and recommend skills and hires as the program grows.

What You’ll Bring

• Experience building a developer advocacy, developer relations, or technical ecosystem program end to end—strategy through execution.
• Hands-on engineering or solutions background: shipping software, integrating APIs, implementing auth, and debugging production issues.
• Experience building with AI development tools, and the ability to learn unfamiliar codebases fast.
• Credibility with developers: you pair well with founders and engineers and explain technical concepts clearly.
• A track record of running developer events, building communities, and publishing useful technical content. You represent a platform well in person and online.
• Bias for action and follow-through. You're based in San Francisco and work with developers in person.

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

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.