Director of Product Engineering, Search Systems

W. W. Grainger; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 176,000 - 294,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision, and life ins.

18 PTO days + 6 holidays

401(k) with 6% company match

Tuition reimbursement

Employee discounts

Parental leave

Job summary

Grainger is seeking a Director of Product Engineering to lead the Search organization and empower a team of managers, tech leads, and engineers delivering best‑in‑class search across Grainger’s digital experiences.

You will report to the Sr. Director of Product Engineering in a hybrid role based in downtown Chicago. The role requires 7+ years of leadership, strong experience with search systems, Agile/CI/CD, and AWS, plus collaboration with product, architecture, and data science to drive impact.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of engineering leadership experience.
• Proven track record leading teams that build and scale complex search or information retrieval systems.
• Deep experience with Agile, CI/CD, cloud platforms (ideally AWS).
• Familiarity with ML-powered search or partnership with data science teams.
• Strong product thinking and a bias for impact.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the Search Engineering Domain and lead cross-functional teams.
• Shape the roadmap in partnership with Product, Architecture, and Data Science.
• Ensure the search stack is modern, resilient, and delivers measurable business impact.
• Champion a hybrid retrieval strategy blending traditional and ML/semantic approaches.
• Lead and develop Engineering Managers and Senior Managers.
• Foster a culture grounded in psychological safety, learning, and technical excellence.
• Drive goals, accountability, and autonomy; support hiring and succession planning.
• Improve agile practices, observability, and operational rigor.
• Use metrics to assess health, velocity, and outcomes; partner to remove blockers.
• Promote DevOps, CI/CD, and cloud-native practices.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Team management

Agile

CI/CD

Cloud AWS

Search / IR systems

ML-powered search

Product thinking

Communication

People development

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

AWS

Solr

Job description

Grainger is seeking a Director of Product Engineering to lead the Search organization and empower a team of managers, tech leads, and engineers delivering best‑in‑class search across Grainger’s digital experiences.

You will report to the Sr. Director of Product Engineering in a hybrid role based in downtown Chicago. The role requires 7+ years of leadership, strong experience with search systems, Agile/CI/CD, and AWS, plus collaboration with product, architecture, and data science to drive impact.