About the RoleAs a Senior Engineering Manager on Zoro's Enterprise Platform Engineering group, you'll provide strategic and tactical leadership to foundational platform services, ensuring technical excellence, reliability, and scalability. You'll maintain Senior Software Engineer-level technical proficiency and occasionally contribute directly to high-impact engineering tasks, particularly around software quality and testing.
Key Responsibilities- Strategic Vision and Technical Leadership:
- Set and execute strategic technical direction, emphasizing robust, scalable, and thoroughly tested foundational services compliant with industry standards (PCI/SOX/NIST).
- Maintain hands-on technical expertise, contributing strategically to critical engineering tasks and projects.
- Mentor team members in helping to resolve technical challenges and promoting best practices in software quality and testing.
- Ensure predictable, timely, and high-quality delivery of large-scale engineering initiatives through strategic planning, prioritization, and alignment with organizational goals and capacities.
- People Leadership and Team Development:
- Lead and mentor one or more engineering teams, nurturing a culture of technical excellence, inclusivity, and continuous improvement.
- Provide clear, actionable feedback and growth opportunities, promoting engineering best practices and rigorous testing standards.
- Operational Excellence:
- Champion process and tooling improvements, driving efficiency and minimizing technical debt through enhanced testing and operational practices.
- Ensure alignment of team capacity management and team initiatives with organizational priorities.
- Own and manage platform-related infrastructure costs and third-party tool contracts, ensuring leadership understands the cost/value proposition of various aspects of team spending.
- Drive responsible adoption of AI-assisted engineering workflows within the team, ensuring measurable gains in productivity and quality without compromising code quality, security, compliance, or testing rigor.
- Cross-functional Collaboration:
- Collaborate closely with Staff Engineering, Product Engineering, and Data Engineering teams to align on technical strategy, execution, and outcomes.
- Facilitate effective communication and decision-making across diverse stakeholders.
- Drive sound technical leadership decisions by communicating technical strategies and project statuses to technology leadership and stakeholders; adapting to the technical-level of a given audience and raising that level where possible through education and explanation.
- Incident Management and Reliability:
- Oversee proactive monitoring, incident response, and systemic improvements, emphasizing comprehensive testing and reliability engineering.
- Participate in enterprise-wide on-call rotation, leading engineers in addressing critical issues that occur in real-time.
- Drive the root cause analysis process to identify and address problems that cause unexpected incidents. Mentor and assist more junior managers in their RCA's where necessary.
Minimum Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 4 years in engineering leadership roles
- Proven ability to drive large-scale foundational engineering initiatives, aligning closely with business objectives and compliance requirements
- Deep technical expertise with cloud-native infrastructure, distributed systems architecture, Infrastructure as Code, and container orchestration
- Demonstrated proficiency at a senior software engineering level, directly contributing to complex, strategically critical technical initiatives
- Experience implementing rigorous testing frameworks and reliability practices across large-scale platform services
- Exceptional leadership and mentorship skills, with a proven record of developing engineering leaders and fostering high-performing, inclusive teams
- Strong strategic communication and stakeholder management skills, able to articulate technical vision and translate complex strategies to various audiences, including senior business stakeholders
- Proven experience scaling AI-assisted development practices across teams, measuring and communicating business impact of those improvements
Preferred Qualifications- Advanced degree (Master's or equivalent) in a technical field
- Experience leading internal platform engineering teams responsible for improving company-wide developer productivity and operational reliability
- Significant involvement in strategic organizational technology planning, budgeting, and resource allocation decisions
- Active participation in senior technical leadership communities, demonstrating ongoing contributions and recognized expertise in industry forums
- Experience influencing cross-organizational AI policy and tooling strategy, balancing innovation with regulatory and operational risk controls.
Total RewardsZoro's total compensation plan includes our Zoro Incentive Plan (ZIP) that is designed to foster and reward our team members for strong performance. Total compensation will be highly competitive.
In addition to competitive compensation, Zoro offers comprehensive benefits and perks including:
- Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans with coverage starting on day one of employment
- Maternity support programs, nursing benefits, and up to 14 weeks paid leave for birth parents and up to 4 weeks paid leave for non-birth parents. We also support growing your family through access to adoption assistance program
- 6 free sessions each year with a licensed therapist and Wellhub portal membership to support your mental and emotional wellbeing
- At least 18 paid time off days annually for full-time employees and 6 company holidays per year
- 6% company contribution to a 401K Retirement Savings Plan each pay period, no employee contribution required
- Tuition reimbursement, student loan refinancing and access to financial counseling, education, and tools
- Charitable Gift Program - match gift to an eligible educational, cultural, community health, and human service organizations
- Employee discounts and admission to various civic and cultural institutions around Chicago
- Zoro office perks including coffee bar, beer on tap, unlimited snacks, access to the onsite gym, and incredible city skyline views
For additional information and details regarding our benefits and our parent company, W. W. Grainger, please click on the link here.
The pay range provided is not a guarantee of compensation. The range listed reflects the expected base pay for this position at the time of posting, based on the role's job grade. Actual compensation may vary depending on factors such as location, relevant experience and individual qualifications.
Illinois
$139,800-$233,100 USD
