I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify (Toronto, ON) in Dec 2021
Interview
Step 1: Initial screening with short live coding
Step 2: Life story interview (1h long)
Step 3: Virtual onsite which consists of 2 pair programming and one technical deep dive session.
Step 1 & 2 went really smoothly. During the virtual onsite, the first part was 1hr long refactoring process. The interviewer was yawning and his phone rang up so many times during the interview and it was very distracting. This was really unexpected compared with the reputation of Shopify.
The technical deep dive interviewer was great. He asked interesting questions and was very friendly. He dig deeper and got some interesting answers from me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Gilded rose refactoring question.
2. Building a CLI too for google's mars rover challenge.
I passed LRU cache coding in first interview
I had four more interview.
1. pair coding again LRU cache I did what I did in previous one
2. system design I desinged staff level architectire
3. Technical deep dive I explained my current technical structure
4. life story he asked what we talked first screening
I got rejected .
Important part All I had interview was native speaker. None has accent.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Library Rare Books
Goals
Design the core systems to drive check-in and check-out flows. It should involve a web app (schema/APIs), a job system, and a file storage system.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Shopify in Apr 2026
Interview
I recently completed the interview process at Shopify, which spanned about three weeks. The stages included an initial online cognitive assessment and a pair programming round, followed by a virtual onsite featuring a second pair programming session, a technical deep dive, system design, and a "life story" interview.
Overall, it was an excellent experience. The interviewers were professional and highly engaged throughout. I found the technical problems to be very practical, and notably, the use of AI coding tools was encouraged during the pairing sessions. While the system design requirements were quite lengthy, the complexity was manageable as long as you remain calm, think out loud, and clarify expectations early on.
Had an initial recruiter call, very friendly. Then had a life story interview, very friendly casual conversation as well speaking about past work experiences and how it led to where I am. Was scheduled for a 75 mins coding round, but I dropped since I landed another offer
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
More about why are you interested in Shopify and how I work
Senior Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Shopify with 2.6 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 35% positive. To compare, the company-average is 45.6% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Senior Software Engineer roles take an average of 31 days to get hired, when considering 51 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Shopify overall takes an average of 33 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Shopify as a Senior Software Engineer according to 51 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 31%
One on one interview: 24%
Skills test: 17%
Presentation: 11%
Personality test: 6%
Background check: 6%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
Other: 1%
Drug test: 1%
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