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Shopify interview notes, page 6 of 12

Large Enterprises

Most of these Shopify write-ups come from Machine Learning Engineers (36), then Data Scientists (32) and Software Engineers (27). The most reported rounds are the technical phone screen (49), the system design round (17), the product sense round (14) and the recruiter screen (9).

115 interview notes · updated Oct 2026

Shopify·Data Scientist·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Shopify data scientist interview with a coding question built around a real product scenario. Pretty applied, which I appreciated, though the threshold justification part tripped me up more than the code itself.
  • Write Python to compute a Jaccard similarity score between two lists, then use it to flag which custom themes are likely pirated by comparing them against a list of known pirate themes. Explain your threshold choice.

“The coding part was fine.”

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Shopify·Data Analyst·Technical Phone Screen

May 2026
Shopify data/analytics interview with a SQL-focused technical screen. One question, two approaches, and a discussion about tradeoffs. Pretty straightforward if you've worked with URL parsing before.
  • Given a table with a URL column, write a SQL query to extract a specific segment from the URL. Show two approaches: one using regex extraction and one using string splitting. When would you prefer each?

“The two-approach part is what tripped me up a bit.”

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Shopify·Software Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

May 2026
Interviewed for a PMM role at Shopify, just one question about the basics of product marketing.
  • How would you define product marketing?

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Shopify·Machine Learning Engineer·Take-home Assignment

May 2026
Take-home assignment for an ML Engineer role at Shopify that turned out to be less about machine learning and more about whether you actually know how to use Git like a professional. One question, very procedural, but it covered a lot of ground.
  • Walk through your complete Git and tooling workflow for a take-home project: setting up your IDE and SDK, cloning a repo, branching, building from scratch, writing and running unit tests, committing, pushing, opening a pull request, and configuring CI to run tests on each push.

“This felt like a lot to cover and I kept second-guessing how much detail they actually wanted.”

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Shopify·Data Scientist·Onsite - Behavioral / Leadership

May 2026
Behavioral round at Shopify for a Data Scientist role, two big questions: your life story in data science and a deep project walkthrough with follow-ups that apparently go pretty deep.
  • Walk me through your path into data science, including the decisions you made along the way, what motivated you, and what you learned from it.
  • Pick one past project and walk me through it completely, from how the problem was defined to the data you used, the modeling choices you made, and what the actual impact was. Be ready for detailed follow-ups on any of it.

“I'd prepped a version of this but it came out way too chronological, like a resume reading.”

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Shopify·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

May 2026
Pair-programming round at Shopify where I built a rover simulator with an AI coding assistant, then got asked to critique my own output. Uncomfortable but probably the most useful interview format I've been through.
  • You used an AI assistant to write this code and it passes the basic cases. Walk me through what you'd actually fix before shipping it.

“This one stung a little because I'd been feeling pretty good about the code working.”

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Shopify·Software Engineer·Onsite - Coding / Algorithms

May 2026
Shopify pair-programming round where the actual coding problem (LRU cache) was almost secondary to how you worked with an AI coding tool. The interviewers cared way more about your prompting strategy and how you caught the AI's mistakes than whether you could write the linked list logic yourself.
  • Implement an LRU cache with O(1) get and put operations using a hash map and doubly linked list, while working collaboratively with an AI coding assistant.
  • How do you verify that AI-generated code is actually correct? Walk through your process for checking edge cases and writing tests for code you didn't write yourself.
  • How do you scope and prompt an AI coding tool to get useful output for a well-defined engineering task?

“The data structure part I knew cold, hash map pointing to nodes in a doubly linked list, move on access, evict from tail.”

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Shopify·Machine Learning Engineer·Recruiter / HR Screen

May 2026
Recruiter screen for an ML Engineer role at Shopify. Pretty standard life story conversation, no technical content, just walking through how you got here and why you want to be there.
  • Walk me through your background: how you got into engineering, your education, and what drew you to your specialty.
  • Take me through your career history: each role, what you were responsible for, and why you made each move.
  • What motivates you in your work, and what are you looking for in your next role?
  • Why Shopify, and why this particular role?

“The part I always fumble is making the education-to-specialty jump sound natural.”

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Shopify·Product Manager·Onsite - Product Sense / Strategy

May 2026
PM interview at Shopify with a product strategy question anchored in a specific data point about merchant behavior. Just the one question shared, but it was a meaty one that pushed me to think about user intent and business impact at the same time.
  • Given that 60% of visitors on Shopify-powered stores view the return policy page, how would you help merchants be more successful in your role as a PM?

“The stat is doing a lot of work in this question and I almost let it distract me.”

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Shopify·Software Engineer·Hiring Manager Screen

May 2026
Shopify software engineer screen that covered basically everything: background, projects, cross-functional communication, and some culture-fit stuff I was not fully prepared for. The mix of technical and non-technical questions felt a bit scattered but nothing was unreasonable.
  • Walk me through your education and work history, including why you chose each company and why you left each role.
  • Why did you choose to study computer science?
  • Tell me about one or two key projects you've worked on and what your specific contributions were.
  • How do you collaborate and communicate with cross-functional partners, especially people who don't have a technical background?
  • How familiar are you with Shopify's culture and recent messaging from leadership, and how does that align with what you're looking for?
  • What would you do if you personally disagreed with or disliked a product that a merchant on the platform was selling?
  • What are your compensation expectations and what is your current notice period?

“I had a rough mental script for this but kept second-guessing the order.”

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