Executive Software Engineer Jobs in Illinois (NOW HIRING)

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!
About the Role
As a Staff Platform Software Engineer on Zoro's Enterprise Platform Engineering group for AMP, you'll provide strategic technical leadership and drive significant improvements to foundational platform services used by other Zoro engineering teams. This role is suited for highly experienced engineers who excel in defining technical direction, influencing broad architectural choices, and mentoring engineers across the organization.
You'll proactively tackle complex, cross-team challenges, foster a culture of engineering excellence, and continuously elevate technical standards to enhance developer productivity, reliability, and scalability.
Key Responsibilities

• Architect, develop, and maintain critical foundational platform services and tools that significantly impact Zoro's technology stack.
• Drive cross-functional technical leadership by influencing strategic architecture decisions and shaping engineering best practices across teams.
• Mentor and guide engineers at various levels, both formally through structured mentorship and informally through code reviews and technical consultations.
• Identify, define, and execute strategic technical initiatives, transforming abstract problems into actionable, high-impact projects.
• Collaborate extensively across multiple engineering teams, advocating for consistent patterns, tooling improvements, and standardized solutions.
• Lead comprehensive cross-functional system design reviews, proactively identifying systemic risks, performance bottlenecks, and opportunities for enhancing developer experience.
• Champion continuous learning, proactively introducing new technologies, methodologies, and industry trends to strengthen Zoro's technical capabilities.
• Act as a trusted advisor to technology leadership, adapting communication style to the audience to help drive sound technical executive decisions.
• Direct complex, cross-functional rapid responses to production incidents; proactively driving systemic improvements, influencing strategic operational practices, and ensuring high reliability across critical platform services.
• Evaluate, prototype, and introduce AI-assisted engineering practices that measurably improve developer productivity, code quality, documentation standards, and operational resilience across multiple teams.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of professional experience in software development, particularly in backend, platform, or infrastructure roles
• Expert proficiency in multiple programming languages such as Python, Java, TypeScript, or equivalent
• Proven track record of designing, building, testing, and operating complex, distributed, cloud-native systems using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
• Strong experience with CI/CD pipelines, observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus), and container orchestration systems (Kubernetes, Cloud Run)
• Excellent strategic communication skills, with a proven ability to clearly articulate complex technical strategies and trade-offs
• Experience safely integrating AI-assisted development tools into professional engineering workflows with measurable improvements in developer effectiveness, code quality, and reliability

Preferred Qualifications

• Significant experience influencing organizational technical roadmaps and advocating for engineering standards and best practices
• Active participation in external tech communities, conferences, or continuous learning initiatives
• Extensive experience mentoring senior-level engineers and fostering technical leadership skills across an organization
• Demonstrated expertise in leading technical responses during complex, cross-team incidents, and proactively driving systemic improvements
• Experience leading cross-team adoption of AI-enabled engineering workflows, providing internal guidance, patterns, or standards

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
Outside of Illinois
$129,500-$215,800 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.