Senior shopify development talent and rates in Lagos
Senior shopify development engineers in Lagos run roughly $21–$33/hr. Sub-1.5K seniors; mostly Shopify/WooCommerce, less custom. 2–4 week senior hiring loop. Operating timezone: WAT (UTC+1).
What shopify development actually requires in 2026
Modern Shopify stack: Hydrogen (React) for headless storefronts on Oxygen, Liquid for traditional themes, custom apps in Remix or Node + GraphQL Admin API, and a checkout-extensibility ramp now mandatory (Plus accounts must migrate off checkout.liquid by Aug 2025). Shopify devs who only ship theme tweaks via Theme Customizer cannot deliver headless or custom-app work. The senior tier writes GraphQL queries, manages app proxies, and debugs Liquid → JSON template inheritance. Pay accordingly — the gap between tiers is real.
Where Lagos senior shopify development talent comes from
Where Lagos senior shopify development talent comes from: Lagos senior talent flows from Flutterwave, Paystack (Stripe), Andela alumni, Interswitch, MTN Nigeria, plus University of Lagos + Covenant + UI CS programs. FinTech + mobile-money depth — Nigeria is Africa's largest tech market. For shopify development specifically, this means buyers can typically tap engineers who have shipped at one of these orgs before — relevant operational depth, not bootcamp graduates.