Data Engineering Manager

W.W. Grainger - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Mid Level

Chicago, IL

Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods

About the position

As a Data Engineering Manager at Grainger, you will be part of a new and rapidly growing team dedicated to transforming a variety of transactional and operational data. This transformation is aimed at supporting the development of innovative tools and services that enhance our ability to respond to customer inquiries effectively. Your role will be pivotal in managing a team that builds and operates data pipelines, which are essential for powering analytics and modern machine learning models. You will be responsible for defining the strategy of the team, evaluating and integrating data and technologies, and collaborating with domain experts to build impactful data products. In this position, you will lead a team of software and data engineers, ensuring a collaborative and engaging environment that fosters engineering excellence. You will provide technical coaching through code reviews and pair programming, instilling best practices, coding standards, and architectural principles within your team. Your responsibilities will also include collaborating with Product Management and Data Science partners to prioritize features and guide delivery timelines, nurturing a culture of continuous improvement, and identifying opportunities to enhance development processes. Resource planning and allocation will be a key aspect of your role, as you will need to plan and allocate resources effectively within engineering teams based on skillsets, project requirements, and timelines. Establishing clear communication channels between engineering teams, architecture, data science, and product will be crucial to ensure understanding and collaboration. You will also be expected to stay abreast of trends and emerging technologies, evaluating their performance and applicability to our requirements. As a subject matter expert, you will engage with other teams within Grainger to ensure visibility into progress and deliverables, creating opportunities for collaboration. Additionally, mentoring junior team members will be an important part of your leadership responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead software and data engineers, ensuring a collaborative and engaging environment to foster engineering excellence.
• Provide technical guidance to team members with code reviews and pair programming.
• Collaborate with Product Management and Data Science partners to prioritize features and guide delivery timelines.
• Nurture a culture of continuous improvement and identify opportunities to enhance development processes.
• Plan and allocate resources within engineering teams based on skillsets, project requirements, and timelines.
• Establish clear communication channels and ensure understanding between engineering teams, architecture, data science, and product.
• Understand trends and emerging technologies and evaluate the performance and applicability of potential tools for our requirements.
• Function as a subject matter expert when engaging with other teams within Grainger to ensure visibility into progress and deliverables.
• Work with product and business to define roadmap, communication, and architecture.
• Mentor junior team members.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in batch and streaming ETL using Spark, Python, Java, Snowflake or Databricks for Data Engineering or Machine Learning workloads.
• 5+ years orchestrating and implementing pipelines with workflow tools like Databricks Workflows, Apache Airflow, etc.
• 3+ years of experience prepping structured and unstructured data for data science models.
• 3+ years of experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and experience with shell scripting in Bash, Unix or Windows shell is preferable.
• Implemented CI/CD with automated testing in Jenkins, Github Actions, or Gitlab CI/CD.
• Familiarity with AWS concepts and services such as VPC/Networking, IAM, Glue, Athena, Lambda, S3, and DynamoDB.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance coverage starts day one
• Paid time off (PTO) days and 6 company holidays per year
• 6% 401(k) company contribution each pay period
• Education assistance, including financial counseling, tuition reimbursement and low-cost degree options
• Employee discounts, parental leave, and more