Affiliate Marketing Lead, Shop

About Shop

Shop is the consumer brand inside Shopify. Shop has hundreds of millions of users and lets customers discover new brands, pay quickly and safely via Shop Pay, and track deliveries.

About the Role

We are building Shop's paid acquisition channels. Affiliate is one of them, and it is yours to build and run. This is a hands-on role. You will pick the platform, sign the publishers, wire the tracking, set the payouts, watch for fraud, and prove the channel is worth the money. You will help shape the strategy and own the execution.

The mandate: take affiliate from proof of concept to an always-on program with clean tracking, healthy economics and a defensible read on incrementality. You will work with paid media, data, product, creative, Legal, Finance, and external partners to build a new growth capability inside Shop.

• Build the program. Select and manage the affiliate platform or network. Own the account setup, tracking implementation, terms, and the partner-facing program details.

• Recruit publishers. Source and onboard partners across content and editorial commerce, cashback and rewards, loyalty apps, deal sites and browser extensions. Decide which categories we want, and which we don't.

• Own the economics. Set and negotiate commission structures by partner and by action. Model payback, watch cost per install and cost per new buyer, and cut what doesn't pay.

• Wire the tracking. Own mobile and web attribution end to end: deep links, deferred deep links, postbacks, install and event tracking, and the QA to prove each link works before it goes live.

• Prove incrementality. Last click will flatter this channel. Build the tests that show real lift — holdouts, geo tests, coupon and cashback exclusions — and report the honest number.

• Police it. Monitor for fraud and policy abuse: install farms, cookie stuffing, trademark bidding, coupon leakage, off-brand placements. Enforce the terms.

• Report and document the numbers. Build dashboards, metric definitions, QA checks, weekly reporting, partner records, tracking conventions, and payout forecasts that make the channel easy to run and evaluate.

• Handle the money. Forecast payouts, manage invoicing and accruals with Finance, and keep partner payments accurate and on time.

• Work with creative and product. Brief the assets partners need, keep messaging on brand, and work with Shop product teams on landing experience, offer mechanics and the path from click to first purchase.

• Use AI. Put AI tools to work on partner research, outreach drafting, anomaly checks and analysis. Speed matters here.

What you'll own

• The affiliate channel end to end: platform, partner mix, terms, tracking, payouts, performance.

• Publisher recruitment, onboarding, activation and ongoing relationship management.

• Commission structure and partner-level economics, including negotiation.

• Attribution and tracking implementation and QA across app and web, with the mobile measurement partner and Shop product teams.

• Incrementality testing and the reported effect of the channel.

• Fraud, compliance and brand safety monitoring, including FTC disclosure and trademark policy enforcement.

• Dashboards, weekly reporting and payout forecasting with Finance.

• Partner-facing assets, offers and program communications, built with creative.

• Documentation, naming conventions and operating hygiene for the channel.

• Proposals for the next partner category or test, backed by data.

Requirements

• 5–10 years in affiliate, partner or performance marketing, with hands-on ownership of an affiliate program at consumer scale.

• Direct experience in an affiliate platform (for example Impact, Partnerize, Rakuten, CJ, Awin, or an in-house equivalent). You have run the account, not managed someone who did.

• Track record building or scaling a channel, not only inheriting and optimising one.

• Strong analytical skills. You can size an opportunity, model payback and write your own SQL or advanced spreadsheet analysis without waiting on an analyst.

• Working knowledge of mobile attribution: deep links, deferred deep links, postbacks, install tracking, and tools like AppsFlyer, Branch or Adjust.

• Measurement judgment. You know last click overstates affiliate and can design and defend a test that shows true lift.

• Experience negotiating commercial terms with partners and comfort holding a partner to them.

• Exceptional attention to detail. Broken links, wrong payouts and duplicate credit are the failure modes here, and you catch them before they ship.

• Experience spotting and shutting down affiliate fraud and policy abuse.

• Clear, concise written communication. Short readouts, plain conclusions, no burying bad results.

• Comfortable working with Finance on forecasts, accruals and partner payments.

• Bonus: cashback and rewards partners, coupon and extension ecosystems, multi-market programs, commerce or fintech background.

About Shopify

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.

About you

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.

Before you apply, consider if you can:

• Care deeply about what you do and about making commerce better for everyone

• Excel by seeking professional and personal hypergrowth

• Keep up with an unrelenting pace (the week, not the quarter)

• Be resilient and resourceful in face of ambiguity and thrive on (rather than endure) change

• Bring critical thought and opinion

• Put AI agents and tools to work on the tasks they're built for, and focus on the work only humans can do

• Embrace differences and disagreement to get shit done and move forward

• Work digital-first for your daily work

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen, select, and assess applications. All AI outputs are reviewed and validated by our recruitment team.