Hiring to Build an E-commerce Platform: The Complete Guide

What Success Looks Like

Before discussing teams and technology, clarify what you're actually trying to achieve. E-commerce success isn't measured in code quality—it's measured in transactions completed, conversion rates, and operational efficiency.

Signs Your E-commerce Hire Is Working

Revenue Impact (First 90 Days)

• Checkout completion rate improves or maintains
• Page load times stay under 3 seconds
• Payment integration runs without failed transactions
• Cart abandonment decreases or holds steady

Technical Foundation

• Payment flows work reliably across edge cases
• Inventory accuracy matches reality
• Order data integrates with fulfillment systems
• Performance handles traffic spikes without degradation

Business Partnership

• Can explain technical decisions in business terms
• Understands that downtime equals lost revenue
• Prioritizes reliability over novelty
• Makes build vs. buy recommendations proactively

Red Flags to Watch For

If you see these patterns, address them immediately:

• Proposes building payment infrastructure from scratch
• Dismisses platform solutions without evaluating them
• Over-engineers solutions for problems you don't have
• Can't explain why their architecture is better than Shopify
• Focuses on technology over conversion optimization
• Treats site speed as secondary to features
• Underestimates integration complexity with existing systems

The Build vs. Buy Decision

This is the most important decision you'll make—far more important than which engineer to hire.

When to Use Existing Platforms (Most Companies)

Choose Shopify/BigCommerce/WooCommerce when:

• Standard retail operations selling physical or digital products
• Transaction volume under $10M annually
• No unique checkout or fulfillment requirements
• Speed to market matters more than differentiation
• Engineering resources are limited
• Budget can't support ongoing custom development

Platform comparison:

What platforms handle for you:

• PCI compliance (billions in liability)
• Payment processor integrations
• Security updates and patches
• Mobile optimization
• Tax calculation and compliance
• Basic inventory management
• Order management workflows

When to Build Custom

Consider custom development only when:

• Unique business model that platforms can't support
• Marketplace or multi-vendor scenarios
• Extreme scale (millions of transactions daily)
• Deep integration with proprietary systems
• E-commerce IS your core product (you're building a platform)
• Competitive differentiation requires unique checkout experiences

Headless commerce as middle ground:

Before going full custom, evaluate headless commerce—using established backends (Saleor, Medusa, Commerce.js, Shopify Hydrogen) with custom frontends. You get:

Roles You'll Need

The Custom Build Team

If you've decided to build custom (or significantly customize), here's how teams typically structure:

Founding/Solo E-commerce Engineer (0-$1M GMV)

One senior full-stack engineer who can:

• Integrate with payment processors (Stripe, Braintree)
• Build and maintain product catalog
• Handle order management basics
• Manage cloud infrastructure
• Optimize for performance

This person is rare—they need backend depth, frontend competence, and e-commerce domain knowledge. Budget $150-190K.

Small E-commerce Team (3-5 engineers, $1-10M GMV)

Growth E-commerce Team (6-12 engineers, $10M+ GMV)

Add specialists:

• Search Engineer — Product discovery, relevance ranking, autocomplete
• Data Engineer — Analytics, personalization, recommendations
• Performance Engineer — Site speed, CDN optimization, caching
• Integration Engineer — ERP, WMS, shipping carriers, tax systems
• Security/Compliance — PCI audits, fraud prevention, data protection

Key E-commerce Specializations

Payment Integration

The most critical and error-prone area. Your payment engineer needs:

• Experience with Stripe, Braintree, Adyen, or PayPal
• Understanding of PCI DSS requirements
• Fraud prevention and chargeback handling
• Multi-currency and international payments
• Subscription and recurring billing (if applicable)

Search and Discovery

Product search directly impacts revenue. Evaluate:

• Elasticsearch or Algolia experience
• Relevance tuning and merchandising
• Autocomplete and typeahead
• Faceted search and filtering
• Search analytics interpretation

Inventory and Fulfillment

Often underestimated complexity:

• Real-time stock level accuracy
• Multi-location inventory
• Backorder and preorder handling
• Integration with WMS (Warehouse Management Systems)
• Shipping carrier APIs (UPS, FedEx, USPS)

Team Structure Options

Option 1: Platform + Agency (Recommended Starting Point)

Use Shopify or BigCommerce with a specialized agency for customization.

Pros:

• Fastest time to market
• Lower ongoing costs
• Access to platform ecosystem
• No infrastructure to manage

Cons:

• Limited by platform capabilities
• Agency dependency for changes
• May hit customization ceiling

When to use: First $5M in revenue, standard retail model, limited engineering budget

Option 2: Platform + In-House Theme Developer

One engineer focused on platform customization.

Pros:

• Faster iteration than agency
• Builds institutional knowledge
• Can handle ongoing optimization

Cons:

• Platform-specific skills may not transfer
• Limited architectural flexibility

When to use: $5-20M revenue, need faster iteration than agency provides

Option 3: Headless Commerce + Frontend Team

Custom storefront with commerce platform backend.

Pros:

• Custom UX and branding
• Modern tech stack (React, Next.js)
• Platform handles commerce complexity

Cons:

• Higher engineering cost
• Integration maintenance burden
• More infrastructure to manage

When to use: Strong brand differentiation needs, existing React team, $10M+ revenue

Option 4: Full Custom Build

Everything built in-house.

Pros:

• Complete control
• No platform fees at scale
• Can handle any business model

Cons:

• Highest cost and risk
• Years to reach platform parity
• Ongoing maintenance burden
• PCI compliance responsibility

When to use: Building a commerce platform as product, truly unique business model, $50M+ revenue with custom requirements

Common Pitfalls

1. Building When Buying Suffices

The mistake: Engineers want to build. Founders want differentiation. Together, they decide to build custom e-commerce when Shopify would work perfectly.

What happens: Eighteen months later, you've spent $500K on engineering and still lack features Shopify includes free. Meanwhile, competitors launched on Shopify six months ago and are iterating on product-market fit.

The math:

• Custom build: $300-500K first year, $150-200K annually thereafter
• Shopify Plus: $24K-100K annually with apps

Better approach: Start on a platform. Migrate to custom only when you hit specific, documented limitations that cost more in lost revenue than building would cost. Most companies never reach this point.

2. Underestimating Payment Complexity

The mistake: "Stripe has great documentation, we'll integrate it in a sprint."

What happens: Basic integration takes a sprint. Then you discover: failed payments need retry logic, subscriptions need proration, refunds need inventory adjustment, chargebacks need response workflows, fraud needs detection systems, taxes need calculation by jurisdiction, multiple currencies need exchange rate handling.

Reality: Payment integration is a 3-6 month project for production-ready systems, not a 2-week sprint.

Better approach: Budget 10x what you initially estimate for payments. Use Stripe's pre-built components (Checkout, Elements) rather than building UI. Consider services like TaxJar for tax complexity.

3. Ignoring Performance Economics

The mistake: "We'll optimize later, let's ship features first."

What happens: Your 4-second page load costs 7% conversion rate. At $10M annual revenue, that's $700K lost annually. The "optimization later" never happens because features always seem more urgent.

The data:

• 1 second delay = 7% conversion loss (source: Akamai)
• 53% of mobile users abandon sites taking 3+ seconds (source: Google)
• Amazon calculated 1 second = $1.6B annual revenue

Better approach: Set performance budgets from day one. Measure Core Web Vitals weekly. Make performance a non-negotiable constraint, not a "nice to have."

4. Hiring Platform Generalists for Custom Build

The mistake: "They built Shopify themes, they can build custom e-commerce."

What happens: Platform development and custom development require different skills. Shopify theme developers may struggle with database design, API architecture, and infrastructure management. You spend months on ramp-up.

Better approach: For custom builds, hire engineers with backend system experience, not just platform experience. E-commerce domain knowledge helps, but architectural skills matter more.

5. Neglecting Inventory Accuracy

The mistake: "Inventory is just a number in a database, how hard can it be?"

What happens: Overselling (selling items you don't have), underselling (showing out-of-stock when you have items), fulfillment errors, customer service nightmares, and negative reviews that tank conversion.

Why it's hard:

• Multiple sales channels selling same inventory
• Warehouse systems out of sync with web
• Returns taking days to reflect
• Threshold-based purchasing requiring accuracy
• Fraud and shrinkage causing discrepancies

Better approach: Choose inventory management systems carefully. Integrate tightly with fulfillment. Build alerts for discrepancy detection. Never trust inventory numbers without verification systems.