Shopify Plus engineering for brands that have outgrown a generic theme.
Theme architecture, Shopify Functions, Checkout Extensibility, and the performance work most agencies send to someone else. I do it directly, with documented code your team can maintain after I'm gone.
What I build.
Most Shopify Plus stores hit a ceiling not because the platform can't do what the business needs, but because no one on the team owns the engineering layer deeply enough to use it well. Theme logic accumulates, Functions stay unused, checkout stays generic, and performance quietly degrades until it shows up in conversion data.
I work as a senior Shopify engineer embedded alongside your team. That means I take ownership of the technical layer: theme architecture, platform APIs, performance, and the integration work that connects Shopify to the rest of your stack. I write code that ships, stays fast, and doesn't require tribal knowledge to understand six months later.
Where automation and tooling can help (Shopify Flow, n8n, AI-assisted development), I use them. The priority is always a storefront that works correctly and is easy to hand back.
Who this is for.
Established DTC brands doing real volume on Shopify Plus. Typically there's an internal director or VP of ecommerce and a small team (designer, junior dev, ops) who need a senior engineering lead, not another agency retainer. I work alongside that team, not instead of them.
I also work with Shopify-adjacent partners: agencies who need senior capacity on a specific project, and teams mid-migration who need someone who has seen the platform edge cases.
Engagement options.
Retainer
Ongoing embedded engineering. You get a fixed number of hours per month, a direct line, and a senior engineer who knows your codebase. Minimum 40 hours per month, 60-day initial commitment. Best for teams with a continuous workload: launches, experiments, ongoing feature work.
Fixed-scope project
Defined deliverable, defined timeline, defined price. I write the scope, you approve it, we execute. From $10K. Best for migrations, full theme builds, major feature work, or performance overhauls with a clear start and end.
Audit
Inheriting a messy codebase? I audit the theme and integration layer, document the debt, assign it risk levels, and produce a remediation plan before anything goes near production.
What handoff looks like.
Every project ends with documentation: architecture decisions, deployment notes, run-books for anything I built, and a Loom walkthrough. Your team should be able to maintain everything I ship without needing to call me back for basic questions.
I sign NDAs. I don't take equity. I work with your existing agency, freelancers, or partner stack without friction.
Recent work.
Three years full-time on Hydrow's ecommerce team: a headless Shopify Plus migration (Contentful, Cloudinary, Vercel) and an incident and monitoring system I built from scratch that held 99.9% uptime through launches and a major redesign.
Platform migration for ISSA: ColdFusion and ElasticPath to Shopify Plus with zero customer-facing downtime, eight-plus integrations rebuilt, phased rollout.
Common questions.
Do you work alongside an in-house team?
That's the default. Most engagements involve a director or VP of ecommerce and a small in-house team. I work as their senior engineering lead.
Can you work with our existing agency or freelancers?
Yes. I write code and documentation that other engineers can pick up. I've shipped projects alongside Premier Partners, design agencies, and freelance specialists.
Do you work with standard Shopify stores, not just Plus?
Yes, if the engineering complexity warrants it. Functions, Checkout Extensibility, and Markets require Plus, but theme, performance, and integration work does not.
How fast can you start?
Project work typically starts within two to three weeks of signed scope. Retainers start within one week of agreement.
Need a senior Shopify engineer on your storefront?
Send a note with a bit about your store. I read every message myself and reply within a day.