Software Engineer II - Technical Leadership Track

Who We Are

McMaster-Carr is a leading e-commerce company offering products that help keep operations running smoothly, innovators designing the next generation of solutions, and makers creating and manufacturing. Our customers have trusted us for over 120 years.

We earn and keep that trust by offering the right products, making them easy to find, and delivering them fast. Our industry-leading e-commerce experience, indispensable product selection, and world-class service bring hundreds of thousands of customers to McMaster.com each day.

Our curious, exceptional people are at the heart of our evolution and customer experience. They turn new challenges and disruptive technologies into opportunities to refine our operations, expand our product offering, and deliver a better experience for every customer.

Our Culture
We intentionally cultivate a culture focused on clear execution and long-term growth. We are responsible for building systems that endure for decades and support the company's future. 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. As an engineering leader here, you'll have significant autonomy with end-to-end ownership, making product decisions while building things that real people interact with directly.

Our team is onsite three days a week in Elmhurst, IL.

What You’ll Do

You'll spend your first 30 days learning the codebase and customer journey while building small but meaningful features. From there, you'll take on less-defined problems, shaping requirements as much as building solutions to improve the customer experience. As you grow, you'll mentor others through code reviews and collaborate more broadly across teams. Over time, you'll deepen your expertise, explore new technologies, and bring fresh thinking to your team's biggest challenges.

As a Software Engineer 2, you'll work on projects like:

• Improve how customers find what they need on our website - You'll build and evolve the systems that help customers find, evaluate, and understand millions of industrial products across our digital publications. This includes improving search relevance with LLMs and simplifying navigation to make our website faster and easier to use.
• Give customers an AI assistant that understands their intent - You'll build new Skills for McMaster.ai, our domain-expert AI assistant. You'll turn McMaster's product data and customer history into experiences that interpret intent, narrow options, explain tradeoffs, and carry context across sessions, making complex industrial work feel effortless for our customers.
• Make fulfillment smarter and faster - You'll design systems that improve how we pick, pack, and ship orders so thousands of customers each day get what they need, faster.

Who You Are

Our strongest engineers are curious, driven, thrive in collaborative environments, and love solving hard problems.

What we’re looking for:

• Contributions to live projects or deployed applications used by real users
• A strong proficiency in a compiled language such as C#, Java, C++, or Rust
• A thoughtful, analytical approach to problem-solving and software design
• Proficiency in writing high-quality, maintainable, and scalable code using systems design and SOLID principles
• Experiences improving system architecture, testing, and monitoring to ensure reliability and performance
• An ability to communicate clearly and confidently across technical and non-technical audiences
• Interest in growing as a mentor, coach, and leader

Technologies We Use

• Backend: NET, .NET 10, ASP.NET Core, C#, Python
• Frontend: React, Typescript, JavaScript, CSS
• Database: MongoDB, Elasticsearch, SQL, Db2, Redis
• Testing: Selenium, Playwright, Xunit, Jest
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Jenkins, Gitlab, Azure, Linux, VMWare, IIS
• LLMs: OpenAI, Copilot, Claude, Gemini, Grok, perplexity, deepseek
• Applied AI : RAG, Embeddings, Vectorization, Machine Learning, Computer Vision
• Dev Tools : Swagger, Git
• Messaging /Data Streaming: Kafka, MQ

Cash Compensation

Base salary: $153,000 - $180,000.

Total cash compensation typically ranges from $191,000 - $243,000, which includes annual cash profit sharing based on company profitability.

You will also receive a signing bonus and a relocation stipend (if applicable).

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

Time Off

• Paid time off for vacation and personal time

Family & Future

• Paid parental leave for all new parents
• Adoption and surrogacy assistance
• First-time home buyer assistance
• Industry-leading company-funded retirement accounts

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 .