When something goes wrong at Shopify, this team finds the solution. Support Incident Response coordinates the company's response during platform outages and other crises. The team is on call around the clock, working alongside engineering and product to resolve issues before they compound, and communicating clearly to merchants, partners, and executives throughout. The team’s ultimate goal is to protect Shopify’s brand while maintaining the trust that millions of merchants and partners put in our products daily.

As a Support Incident Response Manager you’ll own your team’s incident and escalated case operations and outcomes: from building a high-performing team and driving workflow improvements with an AI-first mindset, to preparing for and responding to merchant-impacting incidents — from first signal to post-incident review. That means building cross-functional relationships with engineering and product, briefing executives during live incidents, and making sure your team has the playbooks and coaching they need to operate with precision under pressure.

The work is technical, fast-moving, and consequential. Shopify's merchants run their businesses on this platform. When something goes wrong, your team is the reason it gets better. We're looking for a strategic leader who makes good decisions fast, works autonomously, and keeps their team sharp under pressure.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and develop a team of incident responders — managing performance, coaching craft, and building a culture of precision and accountability

• Hire well — own the process for building a team with the right skills, judgment, and values

• Stay close to the work — join live incidents alongside your team, review escalated cases directly, and use what you learn to sharpen coaching and improve how the team operates

• Own the response execution for every incident and escalated case your team handles, keeping it aligned to Support and Shopify's broader priorities

• Coordinate Shopify's response to merchant-impacting incidents and escalated support cases — from live triage through post-incident follow-up — working alongside engineering, product, and executive leadership to resolve issues fast and maintain merchant trust

• Brief executives and senior stakeholders during active incidents and escalated support cases, translating technical complexity into clear, timely communications and actions

• Drive post-incident and escalated case reviews that look past symptoms to find root causes and prevent recurrence

• Build and maintain the playbooks and partnerships your team needs to perform under pressure, including during high-traffic events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday

• Use data to define team metrics, track incident and case trends, and surface improvements that benefit merchants at scale

• Advocate for your team and your merchants with peers, stakeholders, and leadership

• Make calls that balance the needs of merchants, partners, and Shopify — with sound judgment when those priorities compete

Qualifications

• Experience in incident and crisis response, external communications, or escalated support

• Proven experience leading, coaching, and developing teams across timezones during high-volume operations

• Experience working autonomously in ambiguous, fast-moving environments without prescriptive playbooks

• Fluency with current frontier AI tools, models, and systems

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills across synchronous and asynchronous settings — equally effective in a real-time executive briefing as in a Slack thread, email update, or incident summary

• Experience briefing and communicating with senior and executive leadership

• Experience collaborating across functions — including engineering, product, and legal — to align on priorities and drive outcomes

• Experience managing social media channels across both proactive brand communications and real-time incident response — knowing when to shift modes and how to calibrate messaging for each

• Proven resilience and composure under pressure in high-stakes, time-sensitive situations

Schedule and team alignment

Support Incident Response is a 24/7 operation, and you’ll work directly alongside the team during critical events — no matter when they occur. You should be prepared to work a schedule that aligns with business needs and team coverage, which may fall outside of a traditional 9-to-5 window and includes on-call availability. You will lead employees primarily within North American core timezones (Eastern to Pacific timezones), and are ideally located within the Pacific or Mountain timezone.

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.

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.