Sr. Technical Product Manager - Foundational Engineering

Zoro.com; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 233,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision, and life保险

401K Retirement Savings Plan

Tuition reimbursement

Employee discounts

Onsite gym and skyline views

Job summary

Zoro.com seeks a Senior Technical Product Manager to shape platform engineering products across Cloud Platform and Software Delivery Platform. You will define a unified strategy, establish a self‑service SDLC experience, and measure impact on developer velocity and reliability.

This greenfield role offers high visibility and the opportunity to drive discovery, prioritization, and adoption across internal engineering customers, with direct influence on roadmap cadence and success metrics.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of product management, with 2+ years on technical/platform products.
• Hands-on technical background enabling credible discussions with engineers.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystems (GCP/AWS/Azure).
• Ability to run discovery with engineers and translate pain points into product outcomes.
• Strong prioritization and roadmap management, with clear trade-offs.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & Roadmap: unify strategy across Cloud Platform and Software Delivery Platform.
• Discovery & Prioritization: run continuous discovery with internal customers.
• Execution Partnership: align roadmap and delivery cadence with engineering leads.
• Adoption & Value Realization: own adoption lifecycle and measure outcomes.
• Stakeholder Communication: report platform progress to leadership.

Skills

Product management

Technical background

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

Internal stakeholder management

Roadmap planning

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

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

Zoro's Foundational Engineering group builds the platform that lets our engineering and data teams move fast and ship reliably. Two teams sit at the core of this: Cloud Platform, which owns our GCP infrastructure and the self‑service tooling that gives product teams control of their cloud footprint, and Software Delivery Platform, which owns the end‑to‑end developer tooling that spans local development, *ephemeral* testing environments, integration and load testing, and CI/CD automation.

We're looking for a Senior Technical Product Manager to bring product discipline to these platform‑as‑product efforts. This is a greenfield opportunity to establish how we define, prioritize, and measure investment in engineering infrastructure --- with direct influence over the pace and quality at which hundreds of engineers deliver software.

Why this role

This is a high‑visibility, high‑impact position with real whitespace. Platform engineering at Zoro is mature enough to have strong teams and meaningful infrastructure, but early enough in its product thinking that the person who takes this role will shape how we do it --- the discovery process, the roadmap cadence, the success metrics, the relationship with engineering customers. If you want to build the product discipline for engineering infrastructure rather than inherit it, this is that role.

What You’ll Do

• Strategy & Roadmap
• Establish and maintain a unified product strategy and roadmap across Cloud Platform and Software Delivery Platform, grounded in the needs of your internal engineering customers.
• Translate platform capabilities into a coherent, self‑service SDLC experience that reduces friction from local development through production deployment.
• Define how platform investment connects to measurable engineering outcomes --- developer velocity, deployment frequency, reliability, and adoption.
• Discovery & Prioritization
• Build and run a continuous discovery process with internal customers (product engineering, data engineering) to surface unmet needs, pain points, and adoption barriers.
• Maintain a prioritized backlog that balances strategic capability‑building with near‑term engineering customer needs.
• Partner with engineering leads to evaluate build‑vs‑buy decisions and platform architecture choices through a product lens.
• Execution Partnership
• Work closely with engineering managers and tech leads on both teams to align roadmap, dependencies, and delivery cadence.
• Define acceptance criteria and success metrics for platform initiatives; hold the team accountable to outcomes, not just outputs.
• Remove ambiguity and drive clarity on scope, sequencing, and trade‑offs.
• Adoption & Value Realization
• Own the adoption lifecycle for platform tooling --- from awareness and onboarding to sustained use and customer satisfaction.
• Establish feedback loops that make it easy for engineering teams to surface issues, request capabilities, and understand what's coming.
• Communicate platform progress and impact to engineering leadership and stakeholders.

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of product management experience, with at least 2 years focused on technical or platform products (developer tools, infrastructure, internal platforms, or similar).
• Hands‑on technical background --- you've built software or worked closely enough with infrastructure and cloud environments that you can engage credibly with engineers on architecture, trade‑offs, and implementation complexity.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystems --- familiarity with GCP (or comparable hyperscaler), containerization, infrastructure‑as‑code, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong product instincts for internal customers --- you know how to run discovery with engineers, translate pain points into product requirements, and define success for a product where adoption is never mandated.
• Structured prioritization and roadmap management skills --- you can hold a long‑term vision while making pragmatic near‑term decisions, and you communicate those trade‑offs clearly.
• Excellent cross‑functional collaboration --- comfortable influencing without authority, aligning engineering, platform, and leadership stakeholders around a shared direction.

Nice to have

• Experience with GCP services (GKE, Cloud Build, Artifact Registry, etc.) or comparable AWS/Azure equivalents.
• Familiarity with platform engineering concepts --- internal developer platforms (IDPs), golden paths, platform‑as‑product.
• Experience at a company with a distinct platform/product engineering split.
• Background with developer experience (DevEx) measurement frameworks.

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

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.

Illinois

$139,800---$233,100 USD

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.