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Chicago, Illinois, United States
Onsite
Company Summary
Zoro.com is a leading eCommerce platform offering nearly 12 million tools, parts and supplies for our business customers. Launched in 2011, we brought a B2C-like experience to the B2B industry, and continue to be at the forefront of digital innovation at the intersection of technology and distribution. We have rapidly grown to over $1 billion in annual revenue and we’re just getting started!
This is the senior technical role on a data product team, in a data organization that is becoming a software-engineering organization and deliberately reinventing how engineering work is performed with AI. You will set the technical direction for what the team builds: APIs, backend services, shared libraries, operational data stores, and data-processing systems; and you will build alongside the engineers doing it. This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports. Every data product team at Zoro runs on a three-way partnership: the product manager owns what gets built and in what order, the engineering manager owns the engineering practice and how engineers grow, and you own how it gets built, including the architecture, the interfaces, the sequencing of the work, and the call on whether a design is ready.
You will be measured by what the team ships, not solely by what you ship yourself. The best tech leads spend their time on the decisions that are expensive to reverse and leave the rest to the engineers who will learn from making them. The role sits at the seam between software engineering and data science and asks for real strength in both: you may not be building models yourself, but you need to be credible with the people who do, and able to reason about whether an offline metric will hold up online, what a latency budget means for an inference path, and when a model is the right tool and when a rule would do. We expect Tech Leads to use AI in their own engineering and to shape how their teams use it.
We value engineers who take ownership, prefer simple systems, treat operations as part of engineering, ask questions when designs are unclear, give thoughtful feedback, and balance speed with reliability.
We expect Tech Leads to make the call when a decision is theirs, to say clearly when it is not, and to disagree well with product and engineering management when the technical reality warrants it.
We also expect engineers to use AI aggressively but not uncritically, and to share what they learn so the whole team improves.
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:
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.
Our Culture
Zoro was founded in 2011 with a simple idea: make it easy for businesses to get the tools, parts, and supplies they need to keep things running. We've grown by staying curious, moving quickly, and solving everyday challenges in smart, practical ways. Backed by W.W. Grainger and inspired by our endless assortment business model, we’re on a clear path toward our next big milestone: $2 billion in revenue—and beyond.
At Zoro, we don’t just follow a playbook—we help build it. You’ll get to work on real problems with a supportive team that shares ideas freely, learns from each other, and celebrates wins together. Our culture is grounded in values that guide how we show up every day: Winning & Learning Together, Being Customer Obsessed, Being Transparent, and Taking Ownership. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re always asking good questions.
Zoro’s culture has been recognized by Fortune, Best Places to Work, and Built In Chicago—but the recognition we care about most comes from our team members, who make this place what it is.
We also know that flexibility matters. Our hybrid work model gives you space to focus and the flexibility to live your life — asking team members to be onsite at least two days a week. Our Chicago HQ (right above Ogilvie Transportation Center in the Accenture Tower) is always open and ready for connection, collaboration, or just a good cup of coffee.
At Zoro, we’re growing fast toward big aspirations — and we’re continuously excited about the new challenges we get to solve together.
We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under federal, state, or local law. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We are also committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible work environment that includes both providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the application and hiring process as well as throughout the course of one’s employment. Should you need a reasonable accommodation during the application and selection process, including, but not limited to use of our website, any part of the application, interview, or hiring process, please advise us so that we can provide appropriate assistance.
