About the role

Zoro's Foundational Engineering group builds the platform that lets our engineering and data teams move fast and ship reliably. Two teams sit at the core of this: Cloud Platform, which owns our GCP infrastructure and the self-service tooling that gives product teams control of their cloud footprint, and Software Delivery Platform, which owns the end-to-end developer tooling that spans local development, ephemeral testing environments, integration and load testing, and CI/CD automation.

We're looking for a Senior Technical Product Manager to bring product discipline to these platform-as-product efforts. This is a greenfield opportunity to establish how we define, prioritize, and measure investment in engineering infrastructure - with direct influence over the pace and quality at which hundreds of engineers deliver software.

Why this role

This is a high-visibility, high-impact position with real whitespace. Platform engineering at Zoro is mature enough to have strong teams and meaningful infrastructure, but early enough in its product thinking that the person who takes this role will shape how we do it - the discovery process, the roadmap cadence, the success metrics, the relationship with engineering customers. If you want to build the product discipline for engineering infrastructure rather than inherit it, this is that role.

What you'll do

• Strategy & Roadmap
  • Establish and maintain a unified product strategy and roadmap across Cloud Platform and Software Delivery Platform, grounded in the needs of your internal engineering customers.
  • Translate platform capabilities into a coherent, self-service SDLC experience that reduces friction from local development through production deployment.
  • Define how platform investment connects to measurable engineering outcomes - developer velocity, deployment frequency, reliability, and adoption.
• Discovery & Prioritization
  • Build and run a continuous discovery process with internal customers (product engineering, data engineering) to surface unmet needs, pain points, and adoption barriers.
  • Maintain a prioritized backlog that balances strategic capability-building with near-term engineering customer needs.
  • Partner with engineering leads to evaluate build-vs-buy decisions and platform architecture choices through a product lens.
• Execution Partnership
  • Work closely with engineering managers and tech leads on both teams to align roadmap, dependencies, and delivery cadence.
  • Define acceptance criteria and success metrics for platform initiatives; hold the team accountable to outcomes, not just outputs.
  • Remove ambiguity and drive clarity on scope, sequencing, and trade-offs.
• Adoption & Value Realization
  • Own the adoption lifecycle for platform tooling - from awareness and onboarding to sustained use and customer satisfaction.
  • Establish feedback loops that make it easy for engineering teams to surface issues, request capabilities, and understand what's coming.
  • Communicate platform progress and impact to engineering leadership and stakeholders.

What you'll bring

• 5+ years of product management experience, with at least 2 years focused on technical or platform products (developer tools, infrastructure, internal platforms, or similar).
• Hands-on technical background - you've built software or worked closely enough with infrastructure and cloud environments that you can engage credibly with engineers on architecture, trade-offs, and implementation complexity.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystems - familiarity with GCP (or comparable hyperscaler), containerization, infrastructure-as-code, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong product instincts for internal customers - you know how to run discovery with engineers, translate pain points into product requirements, and define success for a product where adoption is never mandated.
• Structured prioritization and roadmap management skills - you can hold a long-term vision while making pragmatic near-term decisions, and you communicate those trade-offs clearly.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration - comfortable influencing without authority, aligning engineering, platform, and leadership stakeholders around a shared direction.

Nice to have

• Experience with GCP services (GKE, Cloud Build, Artifact Registry, etc.) or comparable AWS/Azure equivalents.
• Familiarity with platform engineering concepts - internal developer platforms (IDPs), golden paths, platform-as-product.
• Experience at a company with a distinct platform/product engineering split.
• Background with developer experience (DevEx) measurement frameworks.

Total Rewards

Zoro'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