Principal Shopify app engineering
Work directly with Abrar on product strategy, architecture, embedded admin UX, GraphQL integrations, Shopify Functions, billing, AI workflows, infrastructure, launch, and long-term operation.
Founding AI engineer behind Krafted AI - built from scratch to $18K MRR and 530 active users.
Krafted AI internal analytics, first three months after launch. Published with approval.
Engineering work trusted by
Make the right build decision
A custom app should create operational leverage or product advantage. It should not be an expensive substitute for a maintained app that already does the job.
Choose a reputable App Store product when it meets the requirement cleanly, has a sustainable price, offers the integrations you need, and does not compromise ownership of critical data or workflow.
A useful strategy call can end with “use this existing app.” That is still a good engineering outcome.
Capabilities
Products and integrations designed around Shopify's native surfaces, operational constraints, and merchant experience.
Purpose-built interfaces that live inside Shopify admin and respect the merchant's existing workflow.
Tenant-aware products with OAuth, onboarding, billing, operations, and App Store distribution.
Webhooks, queues, synchronization, and operational automation across Shopify and business systems.
Server-side commerce logic and native extension surfaces built within Shopify's platform constraints.
App-connected storefront functionality that installs cleanly without fragile theme modifications.
Merchandising, product content, images, and catalog decisions with deterministic verification.
Architecture repairs, performance work, API migrations, monitoring, and ongoing ownership.
Flagship Shopify case study
Founding AI Engineer responsible for product strategy, architecture, end-to-end product development, and deployment.
Commercial and usage metrics cover the first three months after public launch and come from Krafted AI internal analytics, published with approval. Installs are cumulative historical installs.
Canonical product data and explicit workflow states keep model providers replaceable and failures recoverable.
Data shape, asset availability, and publishing requirements are checked in code before Shopify is changed.
Completed work survives plan limits and remains ready when the merchant is able to publish.
Critical theme changes are read back from Shopify before the pipeline declares success.
Engineering standards
The hard part of a Shopify app begins where a successful API response stops. These are the decisions that keep merchant operations dependable.
Use Shopify's current API direction, request only what a workflow needs, and plan quarterly version upgrades.
Request the smallest practical scopes and keep merchant data out of systems that do not need it.
Assume webhooks can arrive twice, late, or out of order. Make reprocessing safe by design.
Checkpoint long-running work, bound retries, respect rate limits, and reconcile uncertain writes.
Instrument jobs, integrations, billing, and failure paths so production behavior is explainable.
Security and privacy
Security practices are informed by ISO/IEC 27001 controls. Systems are designed to support Shopify's privacy requirements and applicable GDPR obligations.
Common compliance contexts
GDPR
HIPAA
TRUSTe
SOC 2These marks identify common compliance contexts, not certifications held by Abrar. The applicable controls depend on the data, jurisdictions, merchant policies, and operating processes of each project.
Delivery process
Map the workflow, users, Shopify plan, commercial model, and the cost of leaving the problem unsolved.
Specify app surfaces, data flows, infrastructure, security boundaries, and measurable success criteria.
Ship in short cycles against a Shopify development store with working software visible early.
Test permissions, billing, webhooks, failure recovery, uninstall behavior, and the complete merchant journey.
Deploy, document, monitor, maintain, and keep the app aligned with quarterly Shopify API releases.
Client evidence
100+ projects across 10+ countries
Overall engineering experience across commerce, AI, enterprise, and regulated systems.
“Abrar is incredibly skilled at AI & automation. He helped me create a custom app with AI automations to significantly decrease my work load. He's very efficient & does not need much direction to get the job done. He does a lot of research to ensure we're doing things correctly & presents an array of options which I always appreciated. Would highly recommend working with Abrar!”
“One decision mid-project completely changed our trajectory. Migrating us to Storyblok was not what we originally planned, but it was absolutely the right call. Abrar and his team turned the CMS from our biggest bottleneck into our biggest productivity gain. Our marketing team can now launch campaigns across 37 storefronts without raising a single development ticket. That shift happened in 14 days.”
“What stands out most about Abrar is the combination of deep technical expertise, excellent analytical thinking, and consistently reliable execution. He brings strong full-stack engineering and AWS architecture knowledge, works in a highly structured and independent way, and delivers high-quality results even when requirements are complex or changing quickly. Just as important, he communicates professionally, collaborates well with different stakeholders, and shares knowledge in a way that strengthens the people around him.”
“I would like to take a moment to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation for the outstanding work and dedication of Abrar. As a developer, he has consistently demonstrated exceptional skills, knowledge, and professionalism, qualities that are rare to find. From the very start, his commitment to excellence was evident in every task he undertook. He took full responsibility for each project, treating it as if it were his own. His attention to detail, problem-solving abilities, and innovative approach to challenges have made a significant impact, clearly showcasing his deep understanding of his craft. One of the qualities I truly admire about Abrar is his humility. Despite being an incredibly talented developer, he remains grounded and approachable. He has always been willing to help, share insights, and provide guidance when needed. His patience and kindness in explaining complex concepts have made collaborating with him an absolute pleasure. What truly sets Abrar apart is his unwavering sense of responsibility. He consistently took ownership of every task, delivering high-quality results on time without ever asking for anything in return, not even compensation. His integrity and passion for his work speak volumes, as he always put the success of the project above all else, something I hold in the highest regard. His combination of humility and knowledge is rare, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with someone as talented, responsible, and respectful as Abrar.”
“Amazing experience working with Abrar. From the very beginning, he demonstrated a high level of professionalism, attention to detail, and exceptional commitment to the project. I asked him to build an AI chatbot integrated with Airtable for Airbnb guest assistance, and he not only met expectations but exceeded them in every way. Abrar not only completed all the required tasks with precision but also went above and beyond, adding improvements and additional features that truly made a difference in the final product. His communication was clear and consistent, always willing to listen and adjust to my needs. I highly recommend working with Abrar, and I will definitely reach out to him for future projects. Thank you, Abrar, for your incredible dedication and excellent work!”
“Abrar was great to work with. He helped me build out a client dashboard for my personal training business linking client data to an AI bot for personalised program design. It was a big project with a lot of industry-specific detail, and Abrar was very open to learning our needs and delivering exactly what I had envisioned. Thanks Abrar!!”
“The level of precision he brought to pharmaceutical compliance requirements was higher than we expected from an external team. The MLR workflow engine Abrar built enforces three-stage approval at the platform level - not by process convention, but by technical constraint. That distinction matters in regulated markets. Our regional teams now publish across 100+ markets without developer involvement, and every content action is audit-logged.”
“The root cause of our retrieval problem was identified within a week - our chunking strategy was treating a 2-million-document corpus as homogeneous text. Abrar's switch to content-type-aware chunking moved retrieval precision from 61% to 84%. The RAG chatbot now resolves member queries at a rate that has meaningfully reduced load on our member services team. The TTS integration worked on day one.”
Before you commission an app
These answers address the choices that materially affect scope, platform risk, commercial viability, ownership, and long-term operations.
Start with the economic case, not the feature list. A custom app is usually justified when it removes substantial recurring work, replaces several fragile tools, enables a revenue-producing product, protects a distinctive workflow, or gives the business control over critical data and integrations. Discovery should compare that value with the full cost of building and operating the app.
Custom distribution fits an app built for one organization or a defined group of stores. App Store distribution fits a product intended for unrelated Shopify merchants and introduces additional requirements around onboarding, billing, support, listing quality, and Shopify review. The commercial model and intended audience should determine the distribution path before architecture begins.
Validation covers the merchant problem, current workaround, reachable market, willingness to pay, required Shopify surfaces, and platform constraints. The output is a narrow first release with explicit success criteria, technical risks, and a path to billing. Prototypes or development-store experiments are used when a platform capability needs proof before the main investment.
Yes. App Store preparation covers installation, authentication, billing, onboarding, required privacy webhooks, permission scopes, error states, uninstall behavior, listing requirements, and review feedback. Approval remains Shopify's decision, but the product and submission can be engineered against the published requirements from the start.
A multi-merchant app needs tenant isolation, secure OAuth installation, plan-aware billing, reliable onboarding, per-store configuration, rate-limit management, and observable background jobs. Infrastructure should support growth without allowing one merchant's traffic, data, or failure state to affect another merchant.
Yes. Shopify can connect to external systems through APIs, webhooks, queues, and scheduled synchronization. The implementation includes retries, idempotency, data reconciliation, monitoring, and failure recovery so each system remains consistent when services slow down or events arrive more than once.
Models should handle subjective tasks such as classification, copy, imagery, or recommendations, while deterministic code verifies permissions, billing state, accessibility, data shape, and successful Shopify writes. Durable checkpoints, review states, and clear failure recovery prevent an uncertain model response from becoming an untraceable commerce action.
Yes. The architecture can cover Shopify Plus and enterprise workflows. The checkout, account, B2B, and other platform capabilities available to an app depend on the merchant's Shopify plan and Shopify's approved extension surfaces, so those constraints are confirmed during discovery.
Yes. The audit covers architecture, GraphQL and REST usage, API versions, webhook behavior, permissions, billing, performance, infrastructure, and production failure patterns. The resulting plan can prioritize urgent reliability fixes, staged API migration, or a broader modernization while keeping the current app operational.
Billing should be designed with the product model, not added at the end. The app needs clear plan entitlements, trial transitions, upgrade and downgrade behavior, cancellation handling, usage limits, and recovery when payment state changes during a workflow. Shopify billing records and the app's internal entitlements must remain reconciled.
Timing depends on app surfaces, integrations, billing, data migration, security, and distribution requirements. As a production reference, Krafted AI went from product strategy and architecture to a public Shopify launch in three months. A focused internal integration can be shorter, while a broader multi-merchant platform may take longer.
Cost depends on whether the app serves one company or many merchants, which Shopify surfaces it uses, the number of external integrations, data and infrastructure requirements, subscription billing, and ongoing maintenance. A 20-minute strategy call is the fastest way to get a scoped recommendation rather than an unreliable generic estimate.
For client work, ownership and handover are defined before development starts. The usual model gives the client repository access, infrastructure visibility, deployment documentation, and the materials needed for another qualified team to operate the app without being locked into one developer.
Long-term ownership includes quarterly API-version upgrades, deprecation review, production monitoring, dependency and security updates, infrastructure care, merchant support, and product iteration. Webhook delivery, billing, authentication, queues, and external integrations need operational visibility so failures are detected before merchants report them.
Privacy-by-design controls include data minimization, HMAC verification, required privacy webhooks, encryption, least-privilege access, secrets management, deletion workflows, and audit logging. The architecture is designed to support Shopify's privacy requirements and applicable GDPR obligations, while legal compliance remains specific to the merchant, data, jurisdictions, and operating processes involved.
Start with the problem
Bring the workflow, constraint, or product idea. The first step is deciding whether custom development is justified and what the smallest credible path looks like.
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