How to hire a Shopify developer (checklist, questions, red flags)

To hire a Shopify developer, write a one-page brief, shortlist three people whose live stores you can test, ask each how they'd handle the hardest part of your project, then pay for a 2 to 5 hour trial task. Give access through a Shopify collaborator account, never your password. With a brief ready, it takes one to two weeks.

Step 1: write a one-page brief

Developers quote better when they know what you want. A short brief should cover:

• What needs building or fixing, page by page or feature by feature.
• Why: the business goal, such as more mobile conversions or fewer support emails about sizing.
• Two or three stores you like, and what you like about each.
• Your deadline and any launch date it's tied to.
• A budget range, even a rough one.
• Who on your side answers questions and approves work.
• How you'll judge success, written as something you can check, like "mobile Lighthouse 90+ on product pages". The Lighthouse score guide explains which number to ask for.

Step 2: check real work before you shortlist

A portfolio of screenshots tells you little. Ask for live stores the developer built or changed, then test them yourself.

Step 3: ask these ten questions

Good answers are specific. Vague ones are a warning in themselves.

1. How will you get access to my store? A good answer is a collaborator request. Collaborators are Shopify Partners you approve with a 4-digit request code, you choose their permissions, they must use two-step authentication, and they don't count towards your store's user limit.
2. Where will you make changes? Look for a duplicate theme or a development theme, so your live store stays untouched until you approve the work. Shopify itself suggests you duplicate a theme before customising it so you can discard changes.
3. How will I get the code? The best answer is a Git repository in your account, connected with Shopify's GitHub integration.
4. Will my team be able to edit this without you? You want sections and blocks with settings, so new pages don't need a developer. The sections and blocks guide shows what that looks like in code.
5. How will this affect speed? Listen for "I'll measure before and after." Every app, font and script costs something, and a good developer knows roughly how much.
6. How do you check accessibility? Good answers mention keyboard testing and an automated checker such as axe-core, against WCAG. If you sell in the EU, the EAA checklist covers what the European Accessibility Act asks of your store.
7. Do you check your code with any tools? Theme Check, Shopify's linter for theme Liquid and JSON, is a good sign.
8. What will you need from me, and when? A developer who asks for content, decisions and test accounts early has done this before.
9. When are you online in my time zone? Get exact hours. Working across time zones shows what overlap to expect.
10. What happens after launch? Ask how bugs found after launch are handled, and what ongoing help costs.

Step 4: start with a small paid task

Before a big project, pay for something small: one new section, a fix on your bug list, or a short audit. You'll see how they communicate, whether they hit the time they estimated, and what their code looks like. A few hours of paid work tells you more than another interview.

Step 5: put the basics in a short contract

A page or two prevents most arguments later. It should cover:

• The scope, page by page or feature by feature, with the assumptions behind the price.
• The price, the rate for extra work, and when each payment is due.
• Ownership: the code becomes yours once it's paid for.
• Access: the developer works through a collaborator account, and that access is removed when the work ends.
• Confidentiality, if you're sharing unreleased products, sales figures or customer data.
• What happens after launch: how long bugs are fixed at no charge, and what support costs after that.
• How either side can end the agreement, and what gets handed over if it ends early.

If you hire through a platform such as Upwork, still write the scope and the ownership terms down, in the contract or in the first message.

Red flags

• They ask for your owner login or password. Collaborator accounts exist so you never have to share it.
• They plan to edit your live theme directly, with no copy to work on.
• They give a fixed price before seeing your store or your brief.
• They promise a Lighthouse score of 100 or guaranteed sales. Even Shopify's own bar for Theme Store themes is an average Lighthouse performance score of 60, and nobody can promise your sales.
• They suggest an app for everything. Apps often add scripts to your storefront, and some slow the store badly.
• They build a new store under their own account with no plan to hand it over. Shopify's process for this is a client transfer store: after the transfer, the merchant owns the store. Ask how and when that happens.
• They go quiet for days without warning during the trial task.

How I answer these questions myself

This is how I'd answer three of them about my own work.

On speed: I'd point to a product page with a heavy app on it, because that's where stores slow down, and walk you through the Louise Carter case study.

On checking a store: my audits run Lighthouse and axe-core through Playwright on four page types per store, check against WCAG 2.1 AA, and group the findings so the top fixes come first. The audit pipeline write-up shows the setup.

On communication: I've worked with US teams for more than seven years, joining daily stand-ups and walking clients through finished work on Loom. My reviews page has what those clients wrote.

When you don't need a developer

You may not need anyone. The theme editor handles content, layout, typography and colours without code. If you bought a Theme Store theme, its developer is expected to fix bugs and answer questions about it, so ask them first. Installing an app, adding products or editing a page needs no developer either. Hire one when the job touches theme code, checkout, speed, data or integrations.

A low-risk way to try working with me is the fixed-price Shopify store audit: $450, with the report in five working days.