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Mikhail Parakhin is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Shopify, a leading global commerce company. Parakhin assumed the role in September 2024, bringing with him extensive experience in machine learning, distributed systems, and large-scale engineering leadership. His background spans decades of hands-on technical work and executive management, equipping him with deep expertise in driving technology innovation at scale.
Who is the CTO of Shopify?
Mikhail Parakhin is a Machine Learning, coding, and management hybrid with a career defined by building and leading some of the world's most complex technical systems. He brings extensive experience in ML, performance optimization, assembler, and distributed and cloud systems, alongside a proven track record of managing large engineering organizations. Parakhin has taken top placements in prestigious ML competitions, including 3rd place in the ICML/Yahoo ranking challenge and 2nd place in the WSDM ranking competition. His ASM implementation of memset/memcpy/memmove was used in Windows 8 and the Microsoft Cloud Computing platform. His technical specialties include Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Data Mining, Big Data, C++ development, Assembler and performance optimization, distributed systems, Web Search, Ads, Digital Assistants, and Image/Video processing.
Work History
- Shopify: CTO since September 2024
- Microsoft: CEO, Advertising and Web Services from September 2022 to September 2024
- Microsoft: President, Web Experiences Team from August 2021 to September 2022
- RC Module: Engineer from April 1997 to September 2000
Education History
Mikhail Parakhin holds a degree from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, where he studied Physics of the High Energy Particle Beams. This rigorous scientific foundation underpins his deep technical expertise in machine learning, performance optimization, and large-scale systems development.
When did Mikhail Parakhin join Shopify?
Mikhail Parakhin assumed the role of Chief Technology Officer at Shopify in September 2024. Since taking on the position, he has brought his extensive background in ML, distributed systems, and large-scale engineering leadership to bear on Shopify's technical strategy and platform innovation.
