Direct answer
E-commerce software development covers storefronts and marketplaces together with the systems behind them: catalogue, pricing, checkout, payment, order management and inventory. Most of the engineering difficulty sits after the order is placed rather than in the shopping experience before it.
E-commerce engineering
Building and integrating the systems that sell, take payment, and then fulfil - storefront, order management, inventory, and the connections between them and the warehouse, finance and support systems.
What the work actually involves
Retail systems are integration problems more often than they are interface problems.
Storefront and catalogue
Browsing, search, product data and merchandising.
Checkout and payment
Conversion-sensitive, and the place where failures are least tolerated.
Order management
State after purchase - fulfilment, partial shipment, returns and refunds.
Inventory
Stock accuracy across channels, which is where overselling comes from.
Platform integration
Most retailers already run a commerce platform, and the work is extending it rather than replacing it.
Frequently asked
This is the practice the AI work is built on
We still take this work on. If the system you are describing should also be making decisions on its own, start with the AI side.