About the role
Shopify's Payments Growth Ecosystem team makes sure Shopify merchants can accept payments globally. Payments are intensely local. Every market has its own providers, regulations, and ways people expect to pay. We build and manage the partnerships that give merchants that coverage, from the world's largest global processors to the local methods a market runs on.
As Partner Solution Architect, Payments, you'll be the technical mind behind that work. You'll lead the technical investigation and solution scoping that happens before R&D gets involved: reviewing partner APIs, digging into local regulations, and working out what a market's payment behaviour actually demands. That work is what lets engineering teams hit the ground running and gets partners and merchants live faster.
This is a senior, self-directed role. You'll be expected to look holistically at what problems need solving, target the right investigations, and set the workstreams in motion. You'll do that alongside a small team of solutions engineers and partner managers, and in close partnership with Product, Engineering, and our largest global payment partners.
Key Responsibilities
Lead technical scoping for Shopify Payments market expansion — evaluate partner APIs, local regulatory requirements, and market-specific payment methods
Own the technical vetting of prospective Shopify Payments processors: assess capability, coverage, and integration approach, and provide the technical evidence behind which partner we select for each region on the roadmap.
Set the technical agenda. Identify what needs investigating, prioritise across expansion projects and platform support, and drive workstreams to a decision rather than waiting for direction.
Act as trusted technical advisor to our largest payment partners, working directly with their engineering and product teams through complex integrations.
Translate regional, regulatory, and partner-side technical nuance into clear requirements and recommendations for Product and Engineering
Advise on payment extension architecture across the third-party platform: payment session lifecycles, confirm flows, credit card and offsite extension models, and custom payment apps for large merchants.
Investigate and resolve escalated technical issues across third-party payment apps; escalate platform-level bugs and policy questions and drive to resolution.
Run the recurring compliance programs — Attestation of Compliance and encryption certificate renewals — end-to-end, from technical review through code merge.
Create leverage for the team through internal tooling, reporting automation, playbooks, and documentation, so the same work doesn't have to be done twice.
Driving launch readiness: certification, QA, monitoring, incident playbooks, partner technical enablement
Coordinating joint implementation plans across Shopify eng/product and partner teams
Qualifications
Deep technical payments experience; You've worked hands-on in payments — as a processor, PSP, gateway, platform, or on a merchant's payments integration — and you understand how the pieces actually fit together end to end.
Payments systems thinker; Sees the full system — partner, merchant, platform, regulator — and how a change in one moves the others. Designs for reliability and compliance, not just shipping a capability.
Self-directed senior operator; Comfortable being handed an ambiguous problem rather than a spec. Scopes the investigation, sets the workstreams, and drives to a recommendation with limited support.
Curious, resourceful technologist; Strong fundamentals in APIs (REST and GraphQL), integrations, and data flows. Able to answer technical questions and work with partner engineering teams directly, and to dig into production data to find the real failure point.
Direct, high-trust communicator; Clear and candid with partners and internal teams alike — can hold a platform standard or say no without damaging the relationship. Turns complex technical and regulatory detail into something a non-specialist can act on.
Low-ego collaborator; Builds trust across Product, Engineering, Partnerships, Support, Risk, and Legal. Pulls in the right experts early and keeps decisions documented.
Strong prioritisation; Holds expansion projects, partner escalations, and recurring compliance cycles at the same time and re-prioritises as things move.
Nice to have
Experience building or owning a payments integration on the merchant side.
Experience launching payments in new markets
Depth in local payment methods outside of North America, alternative payment methods, or affordability and installment products.
Experience in a payments partner, processor, ISV, or platform ecosystem role.
Familiarity with PCI DSS and cross-border payment regulation.
Shopify platform context, or experience in an app/partner ecosystem built on a commerce platform.