Senior Manager, Applied Machine Learning

Work Location Type: Hybrid
About Grainger:
W.W. Grainger, Inc., is a leading broad line distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom. At Grainger, We Keep the World Working® by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products and solutions delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. Known for its commitment to service and award-winning culture, the Company had 2024 revenue of $17.2 billion across its two business models. In the High-Touch Solutions segment, Grainger offers approximately 2 million maintenances, repair and operating (MRO) products and services, including technical support and inventory management. In the Endless Assortment segment, Zoro.com offers customers access to more than 14 million products, and MonotaRO.com offers more than 24 million products. For more information, visit www.grainger.com.
Compensation
The anticipated base pay compensation range for this position is $173,100.00 to $288,500.00.
Rewards and Benefits:
With benefits starting on day one, our programs provide choice and flexibility to meet team members' individual needs, including:

• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans with coverage starting on day one of employment and 6 free sessions each year with a licensed therapist to support your emotional wellbeing.
• 18 paid time off (PTO) days annually for full-time employees (accrual prorated based on employment start date) and 6 company holidays per year.
• 6% company contribution to a 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan each pay period, no employee contribution required.
• Employee discounts, tuition reimbursement, student loan refinancing and free access to financial counseling, education, and tools.
• 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.

For additional information and details regarding Grainger's benefits, please click on the link below:
https://experience100.ehr.com/grainger/Home/Tools-Resources/Key-Resources/New-Hire
The pay range provided above is not a guarantee of compensation. The range reflects the potential base pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual base pay compensation will depend, in part, on factors such as geographic work location and relevant experience and skills.
The anticipated compensation range described above is subject to change and the compensation ultimately paid may be higher or lower than the range described above.
Grainger reserves the right to amend, modify, or terminate its compensation and benefit programs in its sole discretion at any time, consistent with applicable law.
Position Details:
At Grainger, We Keep the World Working® by serving more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products and solutions delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. Our machine learning organization is seeking a Senior Manager, Applied Machine Learning to build and lead a high-impact team of scientists and engineers that will partner closely with our SalesHub and Customer Information teams to understand and deepen Grainger's relationship with our customers. Potential capabilities you'll build could include email-scanning AI agents, search, chat and summarization experiences, and mobile app voice features.
You Will:

• Hire, grow, and lead a team of Applied ML Scientists and ML Engineers responsible for developing and maintaining production-critical machine learning systems. The team will be 2-4 members over the next year and grow beyond that.
• Be hands-on to start. Since you will be bootstrapping and hiring a new team, you will likely be very hands on while the team grows.
• Use tools like Python, Snowflake, Kubernetes, Airflow, Databricks, OpenAI, and LLM frameworks to orchestrate and host robust AI / ML pipelines and applications
• Drive model and AI application experimentation and development, including design, feature / prompt / agent engineering, and potential fine-tuning for performance, accuracy, and business impact
• Promote engineering best practices across Grainger Machine Learning, including versioned model deployment, unit/integration testing, CI/CD, monitoring, and documentation
• Manage end-to-end model and AI application lifecycles, from prototyping and deployment to monitoring, performance diagnostics, and retraining strategies
• Partner with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to shape the machine learning roadmap for our SalesHub and Customer Information applications, ensuring alignment with business outcomes.

You Have:

• 7+ years of experience in applied machine learning, including 3+ years managing high-performing ML teams. Relevant academic experience can be included in years of experience.
• Deep expertise in ML/AI methods spanning classical machine learning and generative AI
• Skilled at utilizing the scientific Python ecosystem
• Experience writing production-quality code with automated testing, logging, and observability in mind
• Hands-on expertise with cloud infrastructure, Docker, Kubernetes, Airflow, and CI/CD pipelines
• A pragmatic, delivery-oriented mindset, capable of balancing innovation with execution in a production context
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with a track record of influencing roadmaps and aligning technical efforts to business goals
• Deep commitment to building an inclusive, psychologically safe team culture focused on learning and continuous improvement.

Preferred:

• A Masters or PhD in atechnical discipline
• Experience with GPU computing frameworks like PyTorch
• Demonstrated experience building LLM or agent-based applications

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 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.
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