Jordan Reyes
July 24, 2026 · 10 min read
Start with platform depth, not general engineering
Generic questions about React or Node filter for good engineers, not good Shopify engineers. The first five questions should probe Liquid, theme architecture, and platform limits directly.
Ask: 'How do you structure a section schema for a marketing team that restyles collections weekly?' A real answer discusses blocks, presets, and editor constraints — not a component library.
Probe real checkout extensibility experience
The 2025+ Plus stack runs on Functions and Checkout UI extensions. Ask candidates to describe a migration from checkout.liquid or checkout-script apps they actually performed.
If the answer is theoretical, you are paying for their learning curve. Ask what broke during the migration — every real migration has a war story.
Test migration and SEO awareness
Migrations live or die on redirect maps and URL parity. Ask: 'Walk me through preserving search rankings during a replatform.' The answer must include crawl comparison, 301 mapping, and post-launch monitoring.
Candidates who only discuss data import are describing a data entry task, not a replatform.
Surface performance instincts
Ask how they would take an LCP from 4.2s to under 2.5s. Expect answers about font loading, image strategy, section pruning, app script audits, and preconnect hints — in roughly that priority order for Liquid stores.
Anyone who leads with 'we will move to headless' for every performance problem is selling architecture, not results.
The soft signals that matter
Do they ask about your rollback procedure, staging environment, and launch window? Do they push back on unrealistic dates? The engineers you want challenge scope, not just accept it.
The single most predictive question: 'Tell me about a project that failed and what you changed afterward.' Vague answers are the red flag; specific post-mortems are the green one.
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