Software Engineering Manager

As a leading industrial distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom, We Keep The World Working® by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. With 2023 sales of $16.5 billion, we’re dedicated to providing value for customers, fostering an engaging culture for team members and driving strong financial results.

 

Our welcoming workplace enables you to learn, grow and make a difference by keeping businesses running and their people safe. As a 2024 Glassdoor Best Place to Work and a Great Place to Work-Certified™ company, we’re looking for passionate people to join our team as we continue leading the industry over our next 100 years.

 

 

Position Details:

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Commerce Product engineering team at Grainger. This role directly impacts the success of our business and the satisfaction of our users. You will have a record of solving complex problems, driving innovation, and delivering results in a fast-paced environment. If you thrive on challenges, work well with stakeholders, have a passion for continuous learning, and want to make a significant impact for Grainger, this role is for you. You will manage a cross functional team of engineers on a software development and data engineering team. Up to a maximum capacity of approximately (15) people.

 

You will be reporting to the Senior Manager, Product Engineering Merchandising and will be based in downtown Chicago on a hybrid basis (8 days per month).

 

You Will:

• Promote an engineering mindset into the team through coaching, mentoring, and partnering with practice leads.
• Not directly hands-on code, but you understand how to code and develop, build, test and deploy a workload to production in a modern development environment. You may need to pair with engineers and review deliverables.
• Have hands-on understanding of AWS, containers, and the ability to support a hybrid ecosystem.
• Create/promote a culture of team autonomy, continuous improvement and sustainable pace within the team. Drive a culture of shared ownership, enabling collaboration and removing engineering silos.
• Deep dive with the team on the architectural and technical roadmap, guiding the team to alignment of our data platform and promote best practices established within Grainger Technology Group (GTG).
• Connect people with their upskilling needs and act as a coach towards those efforts. Assist team in the removal of impediments, especially when coming from outside the team.
• Use metrics to monitor the health and productivity of the team and to understand capacity limitations for forecasting possible headcount changes.
• Participate in headcount planning and other operational meetings with other levels of management.
• Have regular touchpoints with direct reports to focus on maintaining agreement between teams, team members, and the business.
• Manage staff through Performance Excellence processes including feedback, career development, performance reviews, performance improvement

 

You Have:

• 10+ years of work experience in a technical capacity. 2 or more years of people management or team leadership
• A bachelor's degree in business (or Management), Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline, or equivalent work experience is required.
• An understanding of how to identify opportunities for upskilling people you manage and how to improve others.
• A deep passion for servant leadership and the knowledge of how to apply these principles from the perspective of people management.
• A passion for Agile principles and processes and an understanding of how to monitor team health.
• Solid experience building software in a modern development environment with a keen focus on your customer and business goals.
• Experience with the Performance Excellence process including goals agreement, career development, P&D and feedback

 

Rewards and Benefits: