Remote Staff Tech Lead – Full-Stack Engineering

W. W. Grainger; Lake Forest (IL); Remote; USD 124,000 - 207,000; Full time

Job summary

W.W. Grainger, Inc. is seeking a Lead Software Engineer (Software Engineer IV) to drive scalable, high‑quality software within the Customer Order domain. You will collaborate with Product Managers and Architecture to deliver modern, reliable solutions.

You will mentor engineers, participate in code reviews, and guide engineering best practices. The role requires deep expertise in AWS services, Kafka, MongoDB, Kotlin or Java, and Kubernetes, with a focus on performance and maintainability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years as a Software Engineer with modern software engineering practices.
• Expert knowledge of programming languages and frameworks: JVM, Kotlin, TypeScript, React or similar.
• Strong backend focus with some frontend awareness and experience.
• Experience with distributed systems and integration patterns (Kafka).
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum and DevOps practices.
• Experience evolving monoliths to microservices and aligning cross-team technical strategies.
• Familiarity with backend-for-frontend concepts (BFF) or Node.js APIs is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineer on a team delivering high-quality, scalable software for complex applications.
• Own engineering culture to enable continuous delivery and sensible defaults.
• Lead knowledge sharing and drive adoption of new tech features and practices.
• Maintain production software with strong triage and issue resolution capabilities.
• Mentor developers, conduct code reviews, and perform pair programming.
• Champion engineering best practices including modularity and performance optimization.
• Drive cross-team technical initiatives with Architects and IT leadership.
• Advance CI/CD pipelines, testing strategies, and build automation.

Skills

JVM

Kotlin

Typescript

React

Kafka

AWS

Kubernetes

Datadog

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

SQS

SNS

Lambda

MongoDB

Job description

W.W. Grainger, Inc. is seeking a Lead Software Engineer (Software Engineer IV) to drive scalable, high‑quality software within the Customer Order domain. You will collaborate with Product Managers and Architecture to deliver modern, reliable solutions.

You will mentor engineers, participate in code reviews, and guide engineering best practices. The role requires deep expertise in AWS services, Kafka, MongoDB, Kotlin or Java, and Kubernetes, with a focus on performance and maintainability.