C++ Search Ranking Engineer

About The Role

Join Shopify's dynamic engineering team, where code is core and innovation drives commerce forward. As a C++ Search Ranking Engineer, you'll craft high-performance ranking systems that power search across billions of products. Collaborate with AI experts and data scientists to create blazingly fast, relevant search experiences that help merchants succeed at the infinite game of entrepreneurship.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and optimize core search components including inverted indexes, approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) search, and real-time ranking pipelines.
• Own end-to-end delivery of ranking algorithms, from prototyping new relevance models to optimizing query latency in production.
• Profile and optimize critical paths—cache optimization, memory layout, data structures— to achieve sub-millisecond p99 latencies.
• Solve complex information retrieval challenges including semantic search, learning-to-rank, and multi-objective optimization.
• Challenge status-quo and evolve our ranking infrastructure to meet emerging search paradigms.

Qualifications

• Proven expertise in modern C++ (C++17/20) for building production systems at scale.
• Experience building ranking engines for Search, Ads, or Recommendation systems.
• Deep expertise in search algorithms—BM25, TF-IDF, learning-to-rank, vector search, approximate nearest neighbors.
• Experience with ranking features engineering and model inference in production systems.
• Performance optimization experience—CPU profiling, cache optimization, lock-free programming.
• Strong collaboration skills, working with cross-disciplinary teams including ML engineers and data scientists.

At Shopify, we pride ourselves on moving quickly—not just in shipping, but in our hiring process as well. If you’re ready to apply, please be prepared to interview with us within the week. Our goal is to complete the entire interview loop within 30 days. You will be expected to complete a pair programming interview, using your own IDE.

This role may require on-call work.

Ready to craft the world’s best product search and drive AI-powered commerce forward? Join us and make commerce better for everyone.

About Shopify

Opportunity is not evenly distributed. Shopify puts independence within reach for anyone with a dream to start a business. We propel entrepreneurs and enterprises to scale the heights of their potential. Since 2006, we’ve grown to over 8,300 employees and generated over $1 trillion in sales for millions of merchants in 175 countries.

This is life-defining work that directly impacts people’s lives as much as it transforms your own. This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option.

About You

Moving at our pace brings a lot of change, complexity, and ambiguity—and a little bit of chaos. Shopifolk thrive on that and are comfortable being uncomfortable. That means Shopify is not the right place for everyone.

Before you apply, consider if you can:

• Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone
• Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth
• Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)
• Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change
• Bring critical thought and opinion
• Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do
• Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward
• Work digital-first for your daily work

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.

Key skills/competency

• C++ Development
• Search Ranking Algorithms
• Information Retrieval
• Performance Optimization
• Machine Learning Engineering
• Data Structures
• Distributed Systems
• Query Latency Optimization
• Semantic Search
• Production Systems