That Shopify employs 3,000 engineers is astounding.
I was rejected after a fairly basic ML interview at Shopify and when I asked for feedback I was told someday I could become a machine learning engineer.
I don’t think the interviewer read my resume or understood my responses as this was after working for several years in ML roles - staff applied ML and scientist.
Why is it astounding? They have one of the biggest e-commerce applications in the world. A mobile app for shoppers. A payment system and mobile wallet app. A shipment tracking system. Tax and small business software. They have their own lending arm with its own software. They have multiple frameworks for other development teams to make super customizable e-commerce sites. They support Remix and Tailwind among other software. They have brick and mortar POS systems.
They are like multiple companies in one: Square, Etsy, aspects of Stripe, aspects of Squarespace/Wordpress. Idk I can see why they have a lot of people.
I think Amazon is very much on another level in terms of scale. Not trying to be negative about Shopify — they have a very large system to maintain - but Amazon is just on another level.
Shopify is not far behind Amazon (the e-com business). It's network sees as many unique visitors as Amazon, though I imagine Amazon has more sessions per visitor, but the GMV across Shopify is just shy of half of Amazon. It's still in the same ball park.
Amazon don't seem release any figures but I've seen estimates of 50,000 to 100,000 engineers. They do have 1.576 million employees worldwide (2025 figure).
I was rejected after a fairly basic ML interview at Shopify and when I asked for feedback I was told someday I could become a machine learning engineer.
I don’t think the interviewer read my resume or understood my responses as this was after working for several years in ML roles - staff applied ML and scientist.
So maybe that tells you something.