Lead Software Engineer, Search & Relevance Platform

W. W. Grainger; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 134,000 - 224,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

PTO and holidays

401(k) match

Tuition reimbursement

Student loan refinancing

Financial counseling

Job summary

Grainger is seeking a Lead Software Engineer (Software Engineer IV) to develop applications aligned with a strategic vision and to coach engineers. You will focus on search relevance for Grainger’s product catalog, working across lexical and semantic retrieval, embedding models, and collaboration with Product and Analytics on relevance metrics.

You will lead the engineering effort to deliver high-quality software, mentor teammates, and partner with IT management to ensure successful design and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent.
• 5+ years of experience as a Software Engineer with scalable applications.
• Proficiency in Java and Python.
• Knowledge of distributed system design (sharding, indexing, caching).
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum and DevOps practices.
• Experience with embeddings and vector search (ANN), latency vs. relevance tradeoffs.
• Experience tuning search and AI-based customer experiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineer on a team delivering high-quality, maintainable software for complex applications.
• Influence adoption of defaults enabling continuous delivery.
• Lead knowledge sharing sessions on new tech and engineering practices.
• Maintain production software with effective triage and issue resolution.
• Mentor developers, conduct code reviews, and pair program.
• Collaborate with IT management to deliver technology solutions.
• Design and improve search systems using lexical and semantic retrieval.
• Develop and optimize ranking strategies including hybrid retrieval and learning-to-rank.

Job description

Grainger is seeking a Lead Software Engineer (Software Engineer IV) to develop applications aligned with a strategic vision and to coach engineers. You will focus on search relevance for Grainger’s product catalog, working across lexical and semantic retrieval, embedding models, and collaboration with Product and Analytics on relevance metrics.

You will lead the engineering effort to deliver high-quality software, mentor teammates, and partner with IT management to ensure successful design and