Become a Part of the NIKE, Inc. Team
NIKE, Inc. does more than outfit the world’s best athletes. It’s a place where passionate individuals come together to create the future of sport. We are unapologetic about who we are and what we’re after—bringing innovation and inspiration to every athlete* in the world. We look for athletes who can push boundaries, elevate our potential and continue leading us to greatness. The next tastemakers, playmakers, risk takers and glue players. Are you game?
WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH
The Engineering Excellence team works alongside Engineers, Architects, and Product Managers across Nike Global Technology to consolidate developer tools and advance platform capabilities. This role reports to Kaushik Katira and connects with multiple engineering squads driving platform unification, DevOps modernization, and AI-native delivery practices. If you're ready to build platforms that redefine how great engineering happens, it's time to join Nike's Global Technology organization. We're transforming how software is built, delivered, and measured — moving from fragmented legacy tools to a unified, AI-native development ecosystem. We hire the best engineers in the world and give them problems worth solving.
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Nike is looking for a Lead Software Engineer who combines strong individual technical execution with the ability to guide and elevate the work of others. The successful candidate takes ownership of complex technical components, drives high-quality delivery across a squad, and contributes meaningfully to architectural decisions. This role requires someone who has grown beyond executing tasks into shaping how work gets done — setting technical direction, catching issues before they become problems, and building software that lasts. The ideal candidate brings solid cloud-native engineering experience, a working knowledge of AI-assisted development tooling, and a genuine drive to improve developer productivity at scale.
- 8–10 years of software engineering experience; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent combination of education, experience or training
- Strong proficiency in Java, Node.js, Golang, React, or JavaScript with demonstrated experience building and operating highly scalable cloud-native systems
- 5+ years of hands-on experience with AWS or major cloud platforms, Kubernetes, containerization, and CI/CD pipeline development
- Experience with developer tools ecosystem including GitHub, GitHub Actions, artifact management, and developer portal platforms such as Backstage or Pulse
- Proven ability to lead technical delivery, participate in architectural decisions, and collaborate across cross-functional engineering teams
WHAT YOU'LL WORK ON
You'll take end-to-end ownership of significant features and subsystems within Nike's developer platform consolidation — working across GitHub, Nike AI Control Plane, Databricks, and Pulse to build tools that thousands of Nike engineers depend on every day.
- Lead the design and development of core components for Nike's unified developer platforms, including CI/CD systems, package management infrastructure, and developer portal functionality on Pulse
- Implement AI-native development tooling that enables agent-led software delivery workflows while maintaining human oversight at critical checkpoints in the development lifecycle
- Drive technical analysis and delivery for replacing existing costly, duplicative legacy tools with modern, efficient platform solutions aligned to Nike's simplification roadmap
- Take full ownership of complex features from design through production deployment, ensuring reliability, security, and alignment with engineering excellence standards
- Participate actively in architectural reviews and technical planning sessions, contributing to decisions that affect platform scalability and developer productivity
- Support the development of traceability frameworks connecting business requirements to GitHub commits, deployments, and production signals
- Collaborate with Principal Engineers and squad leads to grow technical skills across the team, contributing to a culture of craft and continuous improvement
OUR HIRING GAME PLAN
01 Apply
Our teams are made up of diverse skillsets, knowledge bases, inputs, ideas and backgrounds. We want you to find your fit – review job descriptions, departments and teams to discover the role for you.
02 Meet a Recruiter or Take an Assessment
If selected for a corporate role, a recruiter will reach out to start your interview process and be your main contact throughout the process. For retail roles, you’ll complete an interactive assessment that includes a chat and quizzes and takes about 10-20 minutes to complete. No matter the role, we want to learn about you – the whole you – so don’t shy away from how you approach world-class service and what makes you unique.
03 Interview
Go into this stage confident by doing your research, understanding what we are looking for and being prepared for questions that are set up to learn more about you, and your background.
