--- title: 'Senior Manager, Reliability & Platform Engineering at McMaster-Carr' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-manager-reliability-platform-engineering-mcmaster-carr-chicago-dcnn17839tj3' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-06' --- # Senior Manager, Reliability & Platform Engineering at McMaster-Carr - **Company:** McMaster-Carr - **Location:** Chicago, IL - **Posted:** 2026-08-19 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06 - **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/mcmastercarr/jobs/4363405009 ## Job description ## Who We Are McMaster-Carr is trusted by industrial customers to help keep manufacturing lines running, operations moving, and customers innovating. We earn that trust by offering the right products, making them easy to find, and delivering them quickly. Our website, [mcmaster.com](https://www.mcmaster.com/), is a huge part of that promise, and it's earned a reputation among engineers for being fast, reliable, and refreshingly easy to use. Customers count on it whether they're replacing a critical part, keeping operations moving, or finding exactly what they need under real time pressure. At McMaster-Carr, engineering is central to everything we do. Our systems power a business that customers rely on every day, and the reliability, scalability, and performance of those systems directly shape the experience we deliver. [Our Culture](https://www.builtinchicago.org/articles/what-its-build-tech-career-mcmaster-carr-ownership-and-long-term-growth) We intentionally cultivate a culture focused on clear execution and long-term growth. We build and maintain nearly all our critical systems ourselves, outsourcing very little, because we believe engineers who own their systems end-to-end build better ones, and many of the systems running today have been evolving here for decades. That responsibility means engineering work starts with a deep understanding of the problem and its impact, grounded in clear ownership, open communication, and direct feedback. Our teams are trusted to make thoughtful decisions about how work gets done, balancing a high bar for quality with practical execution. We've built much of our infrastructure on-premise by choice, not default, and we're bringing that same diligence with us as we extend into cloud and colocation. Our leaders understand that great engineering organizations are not built by simply solving today’s problems. They are built by developing strong technical teams, creating systems that scale with the business, and establishing practices that allow engineers to do their best work. ## How You’ll Make an Impact We're looking for an exceptional engineering leader to help define the future of engineering at McMaster-Carr, someone who can move from solving hard technical problems themselves to leading others through those same challenges. You'll join a department where site reliability is already championed by strong technical leaders across every team you touch, but this role carries a unique charge: setting the vision for how our reliability practices evolve company-wide. Success here means cultivating strong engineering talent, providing technical leadership across multiple simultaneous efforts, and influencing outcomes well beyond your own direct contributions. Our engineering teams operate within domains: distinct, high-impact areas of our platform that let engineers dive deep, build expertise, and release work that matters. In this role, you and your team will shape the reliability, performance, and security of the hybrid systems that power these domains, spanning on-premise data centers, cloud platforms, and the connective tissue between them. You'll partner closely with teams across: - Hybrid Infrastructure — extend our on-premise footprint, which reflects a deliberate choice for security and uptime, not legacy inertia, while thoughtfully evolving toward cloud and colocation with that same diligence. You'll revolutionize the foundational compute, storage, and networking layers that support both worlds, ensuring seamless interoperability and predictable performance. - mcmaster.com — own the reliability and performance of the site our customers trust most, keeping it fast, resilient, and available even under our highest-traffic, highest-pressure moments. - Customer Navigation — strengthen the reliability of search, browsing, and systems that help customers navigate millions of SKUs. - AI & Data Systems — scale our AI agents and the broader AI infrastructure stack to ensure low-latency inference, secure data flows, and resilient distributed systems. - Fulfillment & Automation — build and harden the systems that integrate with warehouse automation, delivery orchestration, and customer service operations. Across these domains, you’ll drive clarity, reduce operational friction, and build the guardrails that allow teams to move quickly without compromising reliability or security. ## What You’ll Do Your first 30 days are about learning with purpose: understanding our current architecture, identifying opportunities to improve the performance of data flow across our systems, and building fluency in our operational tooling. You’ll begin by improving targeted components—small enough to ramp quickly, substantial enough to matter. As you settle in, you’ll take ownership of ambiguous, cross‑cutting challenges such as: - Partnering with engineering leaders to define long‑term architectural direction, ensuring our platforms scale securely and while remaining performant. - Designing resilient patterns for hybrid service connectivity, including secure ingress/egress, zero‑trust networking, and multi‑region failover. - Leading efforts to harden cloud and on‑premise environments, from identity boundaries to network segmentation to runtime security. - Driving incident response maturity, reducing time‑to‑detect and time‑to‑restore through automation, runbooks, and systemic improvements. - Upskilling your team through mentorship, technical coaching, and creating an environment where engineers can do their best work. You’ll create clarity where requirements are fuzzy, build momentum across teams, and deliver durable solutions that raise the reliability bar for the entire organization. ## What You Bring - 8+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, or Platform Engineering, with deep ownership of production systems and direct experience managing and developing engineers. - A track record of growing engineers through complex, large-scale systems work, knowing when to dive into the architecture yourself and when to maximize your leverage by coaching someone else through it. - Experience leading systemic improvements: you dissect complex failures across distributed systems, cut through noise to isolate root causes, and reduce toil on our reliability team. - Deep experience designing, building, and operating resilient, large-scale distributed systems, from architecture and capacity planning through launch and iterative refinement, while remaining close to the details of execution. - Expertise operating hybrid environments, including on‑premise data centers, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), and a strong command of networking fundamentals, including routing, load balancing, DNS, VPNs, service mesh, and zero‑trust architectures. - Demonstrated experience implementing cloud security best practices, such as IAM design, secrets management, network segmentation, and workload hardening. - Ability to lead cross‑functional initiatives with engineering and operations teams to translate architecture into business impact. Technologies We Use - Backend: .NET, .NET 10, [NET](http://ASP.NET) Core, C#, Python - Frontend: React, TypeScript, JavaScript, CSS - Database: MongoDB, Elasticsearch, SQL Server, Db2, Redis, PostgreSQL - Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Jenkins, GitLab, Azure, Linux, VMWare, Azure Local, Akamai - LLMs: OpenAI, Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity - Messaging/Data Streaming: Kafka, IBM MQ - Security, Monitoring & Vulnerability Management: Splunk, Tenable, Carbon Black, Sentinel One, Symantec, Active Directory/Entra ID, ForeScout, Proofpoint, Checkpoint, Wireshark, Cisco ACI Cash Compensation Total cash compensation is generally around $351,000 - $403,000 and includes profit sharing based on company profitability. You will also receive a relocation stipend (if applicable) and signing bonus. ## Benefits Growth & Learning - 100% tuition reimbursement - Informal and formal mentorship - Employee resource groups Health & Wellbeing - Medical, dental, pharmacy, and vision plans with no monthly premiums - Inclusive, all-gender benefits Family & Future - Paid parental leave for all new parents - Adoption and surrogacy assistance - First-time home buyer assistance - Industry-leading company-funded retirement accounts Time Off - Paid vacation and personal time ## Equal Opportunity Employer We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and dedicated to providing employees a workplace with reasonable accommodations and free of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. At McMaster-Carr, we do not make employment decisions based on age, ethnicity, citizenship status, military status, gender identity and expression, race, religion, disability status, marital status, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected group. This position is not eligible for work authorization sponsorship by McMaster-Carr. Data We Collect We may collect professional, education and employment-related data, and any assessments made throughout the recruiting process, to evaluate candidacy for employment. To communicate with job applicants, we may collect applicant names, contact information, and other personal identifiers, including those outlined in the California customer records statute. Through voluntary disclosure, we may also collect protected classifications under federal or California law (e.g., race, gender, etc.). For additional details about the personal information we collect and its uses, please click [here](https://www.mcmaster.com/cpra_job_applicant_notification/). ## About McMaster-Carr ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: McMaster-Carr is a privately held e-commerce and catalog company that supplies over 600,000 industrial products to businesses for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO). - **Entity Type**: Private (family-owned, bootstrapped) - **Headquarters**: Elmhurst, Illinois, USA - **Founded**: 1901 - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed (family‑owned business) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Industrial supplies & equipment distribution (MRO) - **Target customers**: B2B – engineers, maintenance teams, purchasing agents, and manufacturing/construction firms (small businesses to large enterprises) - **Mission / purpose**: To be the complete, one‑stop source for industrial supplies, delivering high‑quality products with fast, reliable service. (Paraphrased from the company’s stated focus on “handpick[ing] every product” and shipping 98% of orders from stock the same day.) ## Products & Services - **Industrial Supply Catalog**: Over 600,000 SKUs covering fasteners, raw materials, plumbing, electrical, safety equipment, precision tools, and more. Offered as a SaaS‑like web platform with CAD downloads, material certificates, and 3D models. - **Same‑Day / Next‑Day Delivery**: 98% of orders ship from stock at standard rates, with same‑day or next‑day delivery to many U.S. locations. - **In‑House Software & Technology**: Custom‑built e‑commerce engine, inventory management, distribution automation, and mobile applications developed by internal engineering teams. ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company) - **Key Metric**: Annual revenue is not publicly reported; industry estimates often place it in the $3–5 billion range, but the company does not confirm figures. - **Notable Investors**: None (family‑owned; no external funding raised) - **Growth Signals**: - Active hiring across six U.S. facilities (Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Princeton, Fort Worth) for roles in software engineering, distribution automation, customer solutions, and management. - Expanding its technology team with focus on automation, data centers, and mobile app development. - Recently posted openings for “Automation Engineering Manager” and “CMMS Engineer,” indicating investment in warehouse and process automation. ## Competitive Advantages - **Massive Catalog & Fast Fulfillment**: Unmatched breadth of inventory (600k+ products) combined with near‑universal in‑stock availability and same‑day shipping—a difficult combination for competitors to replicate. - **In‑House Technology**: All software (e‑commerce, distribution, logistics) is built and maintained internally, giving McMaster‑Carr tight integration and the ability to rapidly iterate. - **Strong Supplier Relationships & Quality Control**: Products are hand‑picked and verified; material certificates and traceability are standard. - **Engineering‑First Culture**: Technology teams are highly autonomous and work on challenging projects (warehouse robotics, high‑performance web apps, data center design). ## Strategic Focus - **Automation & Distribution Efficiency**: Investing heavily in automated material handling, robotics, and facility reliability to maintain speed and accuracy as order volumes grow. - **Technology Talent Development**: Growing the software engineering and IT teams to support custom development of internal tools, customer‑facing platforms, and infrastructure. - **Geographic Expansion**: Operations centers in five major U.S. regions (plus the Chicago HQ) to provide fast delivery nationwide; newer facilities in Fort Worth and Princeton signal continued geographic scaling. ## Why Work Here - **Culture & Values**: Emphasizes “capability, not skill”—hiring curious people who can grow across roles. Strong inclusion and diversity programs, prayer/meditation spaces, all‑gender restrooms, mentoring groups. - **Work Model**: Hybrid for many tech roles (typically 3 days on‑site per week); distribution and customer‑facing roles are generally on‑site. Remote flexibility varies by position. - **Compensation & Benefits**: - No‑monthly‑premium medical, dental, pharmacy, and vision plans for employees and dependents. - Generous profit sharing and company‑funded retirement accounts. - 100% tuition reimbursement, adoption/surrogacy assistance, paid parental leave. - First‑time home‑buyer assistance, financial counselors, and college assistance for dependents. - **Engineering Culture**: Engineers work on diverse projects (web, mobile, data centers, automation) with support for learning through reading groups, guilds, and technical leadership tracks. ## Sources 1. [mcmaster.com/careers](https://www.mcmaster.com/careers) 2. [mcmaster.com](https://www.mcmaster.com/) 3. [builtin.com/company/mcmaster-carr](https://builtin.com/company/mcmaster-carr) 4. 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