Zoro

Director, Platform Engineering - Foundational Engineering

Chicago, Illinois, United States Full Time

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!

Job Summary:

The Foundational Engineering group’s mission is to enable engineering teams to build, ship, and operate software safely and efficiently. They do so by building shared platforms, automation, and guardrails that reduce friction, manage risk, and scale productivity more rapidly than headcount. Zoro’s engineering teams own their cloud infrastructure, and Foundational Engineering helps them do it effectively.

As the Director of Platform Engineering for Zoro’s Foundational Engineering team, you set and execute the strategic technical direction across core platform infrastructure and services. You use deep engineering expertise to drive clear architectural trade-offs that align with company strategy, ensuring platforms are reliable, scalable, secure, operable, and thoroughly tested, with strong compliance posture.

This position reports to the Sr. Director of Foundational Engineering and is a hybrid role, requiring at least two days per week in our Chicago office.

Key Responsibilities

  • Strategic Leadership and Technical Direction:
    • Define and drive the platform technical vision aligned to business objectives and long-term strategy.
    • Lead and influence critical architectural decisions for scalable, secure, reliable platforms compliant with PCI/SOX/NIST.
    • Maintain hands-on technical credibility to guide key engineering work and POCs.
    • Ensure architecture principles, patterns, and standards are documented and adopted through paved paths and tooling, not centralized approval gates.
    • Act as the escalation point for unresolved trade-offs where business outcomes, risk tolerance, cost, and sustainability must be balanced.
    • Remain accountable for the quality and consequences of architectural decisions, even when day-to-day design ownership is delegated to Staff Engineers and Technical Product Managers.

  • Organizational and Team Development:
    • Lead and develop multiple teams, building an inclusive, high-performing culture centered on engineering excellence and rigorous testing.
    • Mentor engineering managers and senior technical leaders; build a sustainable leadership pipeline.

  • Operational Excellence:
    • Drive continuous improvement in delivery practices, testing discipline, reliability, productivity, and tech-debt reduction.
    • Manage capacity to maximize team effectiveness and delivery outcomes.
    • Evaluate strategic vendors and manage contracts; own platform/infrastructure spend for cost-effective outcomes.
    • Continually improve engineering excellence and productivity by effectively leveraging AI-tooling to reduce toil, improve quality, and enhance engineering capabilities without compromising verification or operational safety.
  • Executive and Cross-functional Collaboration:
    • Communicate platform strategy, priorities, and outcomes to executives and stakeholders, adapting to audience technical depth and raising it through clear education.
    • Align leaders across engineering and adjacent teams to deliver coherent solutions to complex organizational challenges.
    • Partner effectively with compliance partners to manage audits and establish best practices that adhere to policies without compromising engineering flexibility and effectiveness.

  • Incident Management and Reliability:
    • Champion proactive monitoring, incident management, systemic improvements, and operational accountability.
    • Participate in the technology executive on-call rotation to remove blockers and prioritize production issues.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
  • 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 5+ years managing engineering teams
  • Extensive expertise in cloud-native architectures, platform services, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation
  • Proven ability to define and execute strategy tied to measurable business outcomes
  • Experience owning budgets, vendor negotiations, and contracts for platform/infrastructure services
  • Track record of embedding testing rigor, operational excellence, and compliance into engineering culture
  • Strong ability to develop senior leaders and build high-performing organizations
  • Executive-level communication and stakeholder influence
  • Demonstrated ability to evaluate and scale developer tooling (including AI-assisted tools) with measurable improvements in speed, quality, and operational outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Advanced technical degree or MBA
  • Experience influencing enterprise-wide platform strategy and securing investment in foundational platforms and developer productivity
  • Led modernization efforts producing measurable efficiency/effectiveness gains
  • Visible thought leadership in executive forums or industry communities

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
$156,700$261,100 USD

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.