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Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

ecommerce developers - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Ecommerce has transformed how the world shops—and behind the seamless carts, blazing-fast checkouts, and scalable storefronts are developers who make it all work.

From open-source pioneers to startup CTOs who still commit code, this list spotlights the most influential ecommerce developers on the planet. These individuals are redefining what’s possible in online retail through their contributions to frameworks, platforms, headless architecture, fintech integration, and marketplace innovation. Below is a handpicked and updated selection of 15 of the best ecommerce developers globally, chosen for their open-source leadership, technical achievements, community influence, and real-world impact.

  1. Fabien Pinckaers
  2. Stefan Hamann
  3. Tobias Lütke
  4. Paweł Jędrzejewski
  5. Max Levchin
  6. Ryan Szrama
  7. Patryk Zawadzki
  8. Sebastian Rindom
  9. Rasmus Lerdorf
  10. Roy Rubin
  11. Dirk Hoerig
  12. Werner Vogels
  13. Matt Mullenweg
  14. Ronaldo Mouchawar
  15. Santiago Sosa

Now, let’s delve deeper into their achievements and contributions.

Fabien Pinckaers

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Nationality: Belgian

Fabien Pinckaers is a Belgian developer and the founder/CEO of Odoo (formerly OpenERP), an open-source business software suite that includes a robust ecommerce module.

In 2005, at age 25, Fabien began coding “TinyERP” – aiming to disrupt enterprise software by making it open-source and user-friendly. Over the years he evolved it into an all-in-one platform (CRM, inventory, accounting, and ecommerce). Odoo’s ecommerce app, tightly integrated with the rest of the system, is used by thousands of companies for online sales. Fabien is a hands-on programmer who wrote huge portions of Odoo himself and set high coding standards for his team. Under his leadership, Odoo grew to over 1,700 employees and a valuation over $3B, all while staying open-source at its core.

Stefan Hamann

Nationality: German

Stefan Hamann is the German co-founder and co-CEO of Shopware, a leading open-source ecommerce platform in Europe.

A true prodigy, Stefan started coding ecommerce software in his teens – founding Hamann Media at age 16 alongside his brother Sebastian to build online shop solutions. This work evolved into Shopware, launched in 2004, which offered a blend of technical robustness and elegant design. Stefan has since guided Shopware’s growth for 20+ years, overseeing its transition to a modern API-driven, headless-capable platform. He still focuses on Shopware’s technology and product strategy, championing an “open commerce” philosophy. Today Shopware is used by global brands and SMBs alike, and Stefan’s early vision of combining innovation with community-driven development has come true.

Tobias Lütke

The future of retail is retail everywhere.

Nationality: German-Canadian

Tobias “Tobi” Lütke is the German-Canadian co-founder and CEO of Shopify, one of the world’s leading ecommerce platforms.

A lifelong programmer, Tobi was an early core contributor to Ruby on Rails and created several open-source tools like the Typo blogging engine, Liquid templating language, and the Active Merchant payments library. He famously built Shopify’s initial codebase to sell snowboards online, and even as CEO he has remained hands-on with technology – still occasionally committing code and prototyping new ideas. Under his leadership, Shopify has grown to power over 10% of U.S. ecommerce and embodies a developer-friendly ecosystem.

Paweł Jędrzejewski

Pawel Jedrzejewski - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Nationality: Polish

Paweł Jędrzejewski is the Polish developer who created Sylius, a popular open-source ecommerce framework built on Symfony.

Frustrated by the rigidity of existing platforms, Paweł began Sylius in 2011 as a developer-friendly alternative for custom ecommerce projects. He nurtured it from a personal project into a full-fledged platform used by companies worldwide for tailored online stores. As founder of Sylius and CEO of its parent company, Paweł has remained the driving force coding new features and fostering the community. Sylius’s headless-ready, API-first approach (long before it was trendy) and strong architectural design reflect Paweł’s deep understanding of both developer experience and ecommerce needs.

Max Levchin

Nationality: Ukrainian-American

Max Levchin is a Ukrainian-American computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal and more recently founded Affirm, playing a crucial role in the fintech underpinnings of ecommerce.

As PayPal’s original CTO, Max wrote large portions of the early code, including its famed fraud detection system, and championed the use of CAPTCHA tests. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he continued to innovate at the intersection of finance and tech. In 2012 he started Affirm, a buy-now-pay-later provider used by many online merchants. As CEO of Affirm, Levchin still leans on his engineering mindset – optimizing algorithms that instantly underwrite loans and integrating Affirm’s APIs into ecommerce sites with minimal friction. He’s also an investor in many commerce-related startups.

Ryan Szrama

Ryan Szrama - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Nationality: American

Ryan Szrama is an American open-source developer best known for creating Drupal Commerce, the ecommerce suite for the Drupal CMS.

In 2006, Ryan took over development of the Ubercart module (then the leading ecommerce solution for Drupal) and later founded Commerce Guys, where he led a team to build Drupal Commerce 1.0 from the ground up. Ryan’s work brought sophisticated retail features into the Drupal world, enabling thousands of Drupal sites to sell products seamlessly. A fervent open-source advocate, he ensured Drupal Commerce remained free and community-driven. Today, as CEO of Centarro, he continues to steer Drupal Commerce and “headless” Commerce components. Szrama’s contributions have made Drupal a contender in ecommerce by bridging content and commerce in a developer-friendly way.

Patryk Zawadzki

Nationality: Polish

Patryk Zawadzki is the Polish co-founder and CTO of Saleor Commerce, an open-source, API-first ecommerce platform built with Python/Django and GraphQL.

After years of implementing ecommerce for clients at an agency, Patryk and his team spun out Saleor in 2020 to address modern developer needs. Saleor actually began as an internal project in 2013, and under Patryk’s technical leadership it evolved into a high-performance headless commerce solution. He has championed cutting-edge technologies – Saleor was one of the first ecommerce platforms to fully embrace GraphQL and JAMstack architectures. Patryk remains an active coder in the Saleor project, pushing frequent updates and engaging with its growing contributor community.

Sebastian Rindom

Nationality: Danish

Sebastian Rindom is the Danish co-founder and CEO of Medusa, an open-source headless commerce platform geared toward JavaScript developers.

Sebastian and his team began developing Medusa in 2018 while running a digital agency, frustrated by the “hacks” needed on Shopify/WooCommerce to scale a client’s business. They officially launched Medusa in 2021, and it quickly gained traction as a “Shopify alternative” with a fully customizable Node.js backend. Sebastian’s focus has been on providing a lightweight, modular architecture that frontend developers can easily plug into. In just a few years, he’s built a vibrant community around Medusa – which has been funded and is challenging established players.

Rasmus Lerdorf

Rasmus Lerdorf - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Nationality: Danish-Canadian

Rasmus Lerdorf is not only the creator of PHP – the programming language that powers much of the web – but also an accomplished ecommerce engineer who has applied his expertise at scale.

This Danish-Canadian programmer authored the first versions of PHP in 1995 and guided its evolution as core contributor. PHP became the backbone of platforms like WordPress, Magento, and more – essentially, Rasmus’s work enabled millions of online shops. In 2012, he joined Etsy as a Distinguished Engineer, where he’s focused on performance, infrastructure, and security for a major ecommerce site. His role at Etsy, plus prior stints at Yahoo! and WePay, means he has spent over a decade optimizing large-scale ecommerce systems. Rasmus’s unassuming, pragmatic approach (“PHP is a tool to solve problems”) and continued coding make him a revered figure among developers.

Roy Rubin

Nationality: Israeli-American

Roy Rubin is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and software developer who co-founded Magento in 2007 alongside Yoav Kutner. While Yoav led engineering, Roy focused on product and community as CEO, helping Magento become the dominant ecommerce platform of its time. He played a hands-on role in Magento’s modular architecture and theming system. Roy ensured the Community Edition stayed free, which accelerated adoption and gave rise to a vast plugin ecosystem. After selling Magento to eBay in 2011, he served as GM for two years and then became an advisor and investor in commerce tech startups like Oro.

Roy helped build Magento into a global standard for customizable ecommerce. His leadership helped foster a vibrant developer ecosystem and ushered in a new era of open-source ecommerce.

Dirk Hoerig

Dirk Hoerig - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Nationality: German

Dirk Hoerig is a German entrepreneur and software architect who co-founded commercetools in 2006, pioneering the concept of “headless commerce.”

Dirk’s vision was to create a cloud-native e-commerce platform delivered via APIs – separating the frontend from backend – which was a radical idea in mid-2000s enterprise software. He led the development of commercetools’ platform, making early decisions to use microservices and RESTful APIs that could scale for large retailers. Today commercetools powers major global brands and Dirk, now Chief Innovation Officer, focuses on product R&D. He’s often credited as the “creator of headless commerce” for bringing this approach to the mainstream.

Werner Vogels

Nationality: Dutch

Werner Vogels is the Chief Technology Officer of Amazon.com and one of the key figures behind Amazon’s e-commerce and cloud infrastructure.

Originally from the Netherlands, Dr. Vogels was a research scientist in distributed computing at Cornell University before joining Amazon in 2004. As CTO, he has overseen the technical growth of Amazon’s retail platform and was instrumental in the launch of AWS. Werner’s blog “All Things Distributed” is famous for sharing lessons on building robust, high-performance architectures. Known for his signature phrase “Go Build!”, Vogels empowers developers both inside and outside Amazon to innovate.

Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg - Best 15 eCommerce Developers for Your Store

Nationality: American

Matt Mullenweg is the American developer who co-created WordPress and spearheaded its expansion into ecommerce via WooCommerce (through his company Automattic).

As a 19-year-old, Matt co-founded WordPress in 2003, developing a world-class open-source CMS. In 2005 he founded Automattic, which later acquired WooCommerce in 2015 – instantly making him a major player in online retail. Although more known as a CEO today, Matt still occasionally contributes code and is deeply involved in product decisions. Under his leadership, WooCommerce’s open-source plugin has grown to power an estimated 43% of all online stores globally. Matt is a vocal proponent of open-source philosophy and “distributed” work, and through Automattic he supports a suite of tools that interlink with ecommerce.

Ronaldo Mouchawar

Nationality: Syrian

Ronaldo Mouchawar is a Syrian engineer and the co-founder of Souq.com, the Middle East’s largest e-commerce marketplace.

A former coder at a tech firm, Ronaldo launched Souq in 2005 in Dubai, initially as an auctions site under the Maktoob portal. He personally oversaw development of the platform’s early features, bringing an understanding of the region’s languages and payment challenges to the tech solution. Souq.com grew rapidly across UAE, KSA, and Egypt by adapting to local needs like cash-on-delivery. As CEO and CTO in the early years, Mouchawar built a scalable marketplace architecture that could handle both first-party and third-party sales. In 2017, Amazon acquired Souq for $580M, and Ronaldo became Amazon’s VP for the Middle East.

Santiago Sosa

Nationality: Argentine

Santiago Sosa is an Argentine engineer and the co-founder & CEO of Tiendanube (Nuvemshop), Latin America’s leading ecommerce platform for SMBs.

Sosa and his co-founders started Tiendanube in 2010 to give entrepreneurs an easy way to create online stores with local payment and shipping integrations. As a developer, Santiago helped build the initial version of the platform while also attending Stanford GSB. Under his leadership, Tiendanube has grown to serve over 100,000 merchants across Latin America and achieved “unicorn” status with international funding. He prioritizes a great UX and a robust platform with tools for merchants at every stage.

Wrap Up

These legends represent exceptional talent, making them extremely challenging to headhunt. However, there are thousands of other highly skilled IT professionals available to hire with our help. Contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your hiring needs.

Note: We’ve dedicated significant time and effort to creating and verifying this curated list of top talent. However, if you believe a correction or addition is needed, feel free to reach out. We’ll gladly review and update the page.

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