# High Availability by Offloading Work Into the Background

DevFeed: [High Availability by Offloading Work Into the Background](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/high-availability-by-offloading-work-into-the-background-1408.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://shopify.engineering/high-availability-background-jobs>)

Author: Kerstin Puschke

Published: 2021-07-08T18:00:01Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering.md>), [Shopify Engineering - Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering-shopify-engineering.md>)

Topics: [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [App](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/app.md>), [Shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shopify.md>), [User Experience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/user-experience.md>), [Image processing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/image-processing.md>)

Tags: [applications](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/applications.md>), [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [high-availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/high-availability.md>), [image-processing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/image-processing.md>), [server](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/server.md>), [shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/shopify.md>), [user-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/user-experience.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how offloading slow, resource-intensive, or error-prone work into background processing helps applications remain available and responsive. It uses Shopify's high-traffic context and examples such as email delivery, image and video processing, third-party requests, search-index rebuilding, data imports, and stale-data cleanup.

## Source excerpt

High availability and short response times are necessary, making background jobs an indispensable tool regardless of the application's scale.