Jonathan Zhao

"Jonathan is one of the strongest PMs I've ever had the privilege of working with or managing. I've seen him ship multiple products under tight timelines and with chaotic circumstances, and he's proven that he has an innate ability to thinking clearly about any problem, and methodically approach solving it for the betterment of the company.

Better still, Jonathan is a pleasure to work with day to day. He builds great relationships with his teams, and has a calm, relaxed demeanour which makes everyone around him better. Thank you Jonathan for the years of great work, and hopefully many more to come!"

"Jon is hands-down the best product manager I’ve worked with. At Shopify, we teamed up on ads and audiences, and together we drove millions in revenue over short periods. His speed, focus, and sharp decision-making set him apart, earning him a lot of respect internally for the huge impact he made.

What makes Jon truly unique is his ability to balance big-picture strategy with an incredible eye for detail. He’s not just great at aligning teams and setting direction—he’s the kind of person who doesn’t miss a single detail, no matter how small. That attention to detail always made my work better. Perhaps the most notable feat is achieving flow and mind meld with Jon—it was remarkable.

I’ve also loved seeing Jon grow. He’s gone from being an expert executor to mastering storytelling, customer psychology, and delivering amazing experiences. Working with him makes any project better.
On top of it all, he’s easygoing, funny, and just great to work with. If I had the chance, I’d choose Jon as the only pm i'd ever work with—he’s simply one of the best."

"Jonathan is an amazing product manager, and a wonderful colleague. Jon and I primarily worked together worked together at Shopify to build the Shopify App Store's ad platform from scratch. Jon was the product manager and I was the lead developer. The project was wildly successful, and that should be attributed to Jon's skill as a product manager. From the beginning, Jon deeply understood the problem and similar products, and built an understanding of the needs of our customers as well as the business case for the company. He used this knowledge to guide the development of an MVP and ultimately the final product. From my perspective as a lead engineer, working with Jon always felt like we were on the same side, even when technical issues and product requirements were in conflict. Jon understands engineering problems, and is happy to take technical feedback. Working with Jon always felt like collaboration between two disciplines to build a great product, and never a struggle to add more features at the expense of overall quality."

"Jonathan is a very driven, laser-focused, and genuine product manager. I've worked closely with him for over a year and seen him tackle really challenging problems head on. He's able to read through the noise and focus on the main problem and solve it with high conviction in scenarios where there are many unknowns, stakeholders involved and the impact is material. He cares about the output and wants to help the team, the company and those around him succeed.

Before Jon passed the reigns of the Shopify App Store to me, he laid a solid foundation on the new experience and helped the team push it across the line focusing on what was truly important for our merchants and partners. He was not shy to get his hands dirty and work on or partner with others to solve things that needed to get done. Since then he's taken on a lot of new challenging projects and brand new areas, and has gotten them to great spots with the team, focusing on solving the core problem, methodically breaking it down and providing value to users as quickly as possible. Even after launch, he's connected with many users in the community to understand how they're using the product, understanding pain points, and iterating on it as he wants to continuously raise the bar. He's definitely made an impact at Shopify and to our community of developers and merchants alike!"

"Jonathan showed me how a PM can intelligently use data and engineering talent to shape and guide a product. He was absolutely metrics focused, and encouraged others around him to ask questions, measure results, and push further. His metric driven approach helped guide a project to success that was significantly off-track -- by using metrics and results he removes the emotional core of product management and encourages the team to objectively analyze their work. I was continually impressed by his ability to operationalize deeply technical areas, such as improving conversion through natural language search or increasing ad auction performance, while aligning it with product and business goals.

I hope we work together again!"

"I've had the honor of working with Jonathan for several years now at Shopify and he is, without a doubt, one of the best PMs I've worked with. Not only is he exemplary in his craft but Jonathan is respected by his peers and brings great energy to a team. He's shipped many high-impact projects at Shopify; both internal and external to the company.

Jonathan understands his craft deeply. I've seen him solve countless problems; from abstract theoretical problems to in-depth engineering problems. He's focused, motivated, concise, and knows how to put the most important things first. He's driven by fundamentals and principles where you can always rationalize his decision-making and know that he's well-informed. Also, I can trust that he understands all aspects of the project and will represent them in all conversations ensuring the success of the project.

It's a pleasure to work with you day-to-day. Thank you, Jonathan!"

"Jonathan & I were the product and engineering leads on the Buy with Prime program where we integrated Amazon Prime membership with Shopify merchant stores. The program allowed prime members to checkout on participating merchant's stores and get all the prime benefits as if they shopped on Amazon. As part of this was a high-stakes partnership Jonathan led 5 product leads, 30+ engineers and designers across Shopify.

Jonathan was instrumental in dissecting complex problems, outlining principles and driving alignment on both Shopify as well as Amazon side. This empowered the development team to tackle engineering challenges knowing the boundary conditions of the product.

Without Jonathan, Buy with Prime wouldn't be where it is today. I'm very grateful to have worked with Jonathan on this fun and challenging project."

"It’s rare to find a Product Manager that is as organized and dedicated to the success of the team as Jonathan. He was asked to take over the PM duties of a very difficult Data Science team and turned it into a well organized unit. His uncanny ability to know great details about a project and to communicate it effectively made him a very valuable asset to our team."