Shopify Internship & New Grad Software Engineer Interview

The Shopify internship and new grad software engineer interview is a lighter version of the full loop. It runs fully remote over video: a recruiter screen, the Life Story behavioral interview, a practical coding screen, and a pair-programming build. System design is dropped at the intern and new-grad level, since you are not expected to have architected a large system yet. What is not dropped is the Life Story, which everyone at Shopify sits for and which can decide a loop before you write a line of code.

The path is straightforward. An application, usually through university recruiting or a referral, then a short recruiter call, then the technical and behavioral rounds in an order that flexes by team. Entry-level and new grad offers land around L4 on the developer ladder Shopify calls "Crafters," where the work is well-scoped tasks inside a team while you ramp. For the full stage-by-stage walk, including levels and timeline, see the interview process overview.

The Life Story matters just as much for interns

The single thing that most surprises students is how much weight the behavioral round carries. The Life Story is a roughly hour-long, chronological conversation about your background, and interns and new grads sit for it exactly like senior hires do. It often lands early, right after the recruiter screen, and a weak one can end a strong loop. Shopify grades it on impact, readiness, trust, engagement, and self-awareness, and it rewards an honest, specific narrative over a polished pitch. As a student you have less industry history to draw on, so lean on coursework, side projects, hackathons, clubs, and the things you build when nobody is assigning them.

The Shopify angle

Prepare the Life Story before you grind a single coding problem, because it is the round students most underprepare and the one most likely to gate you. A first instinct is to treat the behavioral parts as a warm-up and pour every hour into LeetCode, which is close to backwards for Shopify. Build a chronological through-line you can keep unpacking: where you come from, the projects you chose and why, what each one taught you, and a real failure you owned and learned from. Tie at least one story to a concrete user or merchant impact rather than an abstract "users." The full method, the five attributes, and the Trust Battery are in the Life Story lesson.

The coding screen and the pairing build

The technical side is a practical coding screen and, for many candidates, the pair-programming build, both lighter than a full-time senior loop. The coding is medium difficulty in the language you know best, and it reads like a small feature instead of an isolated puzzle. Think a cart total with taxes and discounts, top sellers with a tiebreaker, a shipping-cost calculator, or a small simulation on a grid. The bar is a working, tested solution over a fast or clever one, and setting up your test cases early is explicitly rewarded. The pairing build extends that same feature across a few added requirements while the program keeps running.

Two habits carry the round. Narrate what you are doing and why, and write your own tests as you go rather than at the end. AI coding assistants are allowed and increasingly expected since Shopify made reflexive AI use a baseline expectation. If you use one, use it the way you would on the job. Describe the design, let it draft, then review its output for bugs and keep ownership of the structure. The patterns these rounds lean on, framed as Shopify-style builds, are drilled in the coding section.

Does Shopify have an online assessment?

Not a standardized multiple-choice OA the way some large-tech internship funnels do. The first technical step is usually a live coding screen, often in a shared browser editor like CoderPad, where you write and run real code while an interviewer watches. Formats shift by year, team, and region, and some funnels have used a short take-home, so confirm the exact shape with your recruiter rather than assuming an automated test. Either way the evaluation is real code you talk through, not a timed quiz you take alone, which is why practicing out loud beats memorizing answers.

Timing and the application

Shopify runs internships in seasonal cohorts and recruits on a university cycle that opens early, so postings for a given term often go up months ahead and fill on a rolling basis. Applying late means competing for fewer remaining spots. Apply as soon as postings open for your target term, and use a referral if you have one. The first rounds can be scheduled quickly, so have your Life Story and a couple of Shopify-style builds ready before you submit. Because Shopify is remote-first, interns are hired across many locations rather than into a single office.

Common questions