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, 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
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 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.
Skills Required
- 8+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, or Platform Engineering
- Deep ownership of production systems
- Direct experience managing and developing engineers
- Experience growing engineers through complex, large-scale systems work
- Experience leading systemic improvements and analyzing failures across distributed systems
- Experience designing, building, and operating resilient, large-scale distributed systems
- Experience with architecture, capacity planning, system launches, and iterative refinement
- Expertise operating hybrid environments, including on-premises data centers and cloud platforms
- Experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP
- Strong networking fundamentals, including routing, load balancing, DNS, VPNs, service mesh, and zero-trust architectures
- Experience implementing cloud security best practices, including IAM design, secrets management, network segmentation, and workload hardening
- Ability to lead cross-functional initiatives with engineering and operations teams
McMaster-Carr Compensation & Benefits Highlights
-
Affordable Benefits — Medical, dental, pharmacy, and vision coverage are offered with no monthly premiums for employees, spouses, and dependents on the company’s careers site. This zero-premium structure is highlighted as a central element of the package and extends to family coverage.
-
Retirement Support — Company-funded retirement accounts are emphasized as a core part of total rewards. Generous profit sharing is also advertised and appears in current job postings as an annual cash component.
-
Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave for all new parents is explicitly listed, alongside adoption and surrogacy assistance. Inclusive, all-gender benefits and college assistance for dependents are also called out on the careers page.
McMaster-Carr Insights
What We Do
McMaster-Carr is trusted by industrial customers around the world to keep manufacturing lines running, operations moving, and turn new ideas into real products. Since 1901, we’ve earned that trust by offering the right products, making them easy to find, and delivering them quickly. Our industry-leading e-commerce experience, indispensable product selection, and world-class service bring hundreds of thousands of customers to our site each day. But we never stop innovating. We turn ambiguous problems, new challenges, and disruptive technologies into opportunities to refine our operations, expand our offering, and deliver the best experience for every customer. Behind it all are our people: curious, exceptional problem-solvers who take pride in getting every detail right for our customers.
Why Work With Us
Curious people thrive at McMaster-Carr. Engineers build technical knowledge through learning groups, book clubs, and one-on-one mentoring. Diverse projects offer experience with a wide range of technologies to encourage career-long learning. Great work is celebrated in an inclusive workplace dedicated to equity, growth and employee well-being.
Gallery
McMaster-Carr Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Lead Software Engineers and other technology roles benefit from a mix of onsite collaboration with teams and remote work. Other roles may be fully onsite depending on responsibilities.
