WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
We are seeking a world-class Distinguished Engineer to help define the future of Nike's global marketplace and digital consumer ecosystem.
This leader will shape the technical strategy behind Nike's consumer experiences including Nike App, SNKRS, Nike.com, marketplace capabilities, partner experiences, personalization platforms, commerce services, and emerging AI-driven shopping experiences.
As one of the most senior technical leaders within GaME, this individual will operate as a force multiplier across engineering organizations, influencing architecture, technology strategy, product innovation, platform modernization, AI adoption, and operational excellence.
The ideal candidate combines deep software engineering expertise with proven experience building large-scale consumer platforms, modern cloud architectures, AI-powered experiences, and highly resilient digital ecosystems serving millions of consumers worldwide.
This role will help Nike navigate one of the most significant technology shifts in retail history: the transition from traditional digital experiences to AI-powered, agent-driven commerce.
WHAT YOU WILL WORK ON
Strategic Technical Leadership
- Define and drive the long-term technology vision for GaME.
- Partner with VP Engineering, Product, Design and Architecture leaders to establish a multi-year technology roadmap.
- Influence architectural decisions across multiple portfolios and domains.
- Lead cross-functional technical initiatives that span teams, products, and platforms.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to senior executives on emerging technology trends and investments.
AI-Powered Consumer Experiences
- Lead the architecture and adoption of AI capabilities across Nike's digital ecosystem.
- Define patterns for recommendation engines, personalization, search, conversational commerce, shopper assistants, content generation and agentic experiences.
- Establish best practices for responsible AI, model lifecycle management, prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks and AI observability.
- Drive the integration of GenAI and agent technologies into consumer experiences, developer tooling and operational workflows.
- Help position Nike products and services to thrive within emerging AI shopping ecosystems.
Marketplace & Commerce Architecture
- Shape the future architecture of Nike App, SNKRS, Nike.com and marketplace platforms.
- Drive scalable patterns supporting direct-to-consumer, partner, wholesale and future marketplace business models.
- Design highly scalable systems supporting global launches, hype events, promotions, inventory visibility and transactional workloads.
- Simplify the overall architecture landscape while enabling rapid product innovation.
Cloud Economics & Engineering Efficiency
- Own technical strategy around cloud efficiency and FinOps practices.
- Drive architectural decisions that optimize cloud spend without sacrificing reliability, security or customer experience.
- Identify opportunities to eliminate waste, reduce infrastructure costs, improve utilization and simplify operations.
- Establish engineering standards for performance optimization, workload efficiency and sustainable scaling.
- Partner with platform teams to ensure technology investments generate measurable business value.
Engineering Productivity & AI-Enabled SDLC
- Lead adoption of AI-assisted software development practices across GaME.
- Improve developer productivity through automation, intelligent tooling and platform engineering.
- Drive transformation of SDLC processes through AI-powered coding, testing, quality assurance and operational workflows.
- Eliminate friction within the engineering ecosystem and accelerate delivery velocity without compromising quality.
Technical Excellence & Operations
- Establish engineering standards across architecture, security, resilience and observability.
- Drive reliability improvements for mission-critical consumer experiences.
- Champion modern engineering practices including platform engineering, event-driven architectures, cloud-native development and site reliability engineering.
- Lead technical reviews of the most complex architectural challenges across the portfolio.
- Help teams solve large-scale performance, scalability and reliability issues.
Innovation & Industry Leadership
- Stay at the forefront of AI, cloud computing, digital commerce and platform architecture trends.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and determine how they can create competitive advantages for Nike.
- Represent Nike within technical communities, conferences and industry forums.
- Build and cultivate relationships across the Distinguished Engineer and Principal Engineer communities.
WHO YOU WILL WORK WITH
This role reports within the GaME technology organization and partners closely with Engineering Directors, Product Directors, Distinguished Engineers, Principal Engineers, Data & AI leaders and Architecture teams across Nike.
You will collaborate across:
- Nike App
- SNKRS
- Nike.com
- Marketplace & Partner Experiences
- Consumer Services
- Personalization Platforms
- Data & AI Platforms
- Enterprise Architecture
- Global Technology Platforms
- Geographies and Marketplace business leadership
WHAT YOU BRING
Required Experience
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience and training
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with significant hands-on technical leadership.
- Recognized technical authority within a large-scale technology organization.
- Proven success driving architecture across multiple complex products and platforms.
- Experience operating at internet-scale consumer workloads.
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, event-driven architectures and cloud-native design.
- Strong knowledge of modern public cloud technologies and platform engineering practices.
- Demonstrated success leading large-scale architecture modernization efforts.
- Experience driving measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, performance and engineering productivity.
AI & Data Expertise
- Significant experience designing and delivering AI/ML powered applications and platforms.
- Experience with GenAI, LLM integration, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), agent architectures and AI platform capabilities.
- Understanding of AI governance, model observability, evaluation frameworks and responsible AI principles.
- Experience applying AI to both customer experiences and internal engineering productivity.
Business & Leadership
- Strong business acumen and ability to connect technical investments to measurable business outcomes.
- Exceptional communication and influence skills.
- Ability to build alignment across organizations without direct authority.
- Proven ability to mentor senior engineers, Principal Engineers and future technical leaders.
- Experience leading through ambiguity and solving highly complex organizational and technical challenges.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with digital commerce, marketplaces or retail technology.
- Experience scaling global consumer-facing applications serving millions of users.
- Expertise in cloud cost optimization and FinOps practices.
- Experience with experimentation platforms, recommendation systems, personalization engines or search technologies.
- Active participation in technical communities, open-source initiatives or industry thought leadership.
We offer a number of accommodations to complete our interview process including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single location for in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications as needed. If you discover, as you navigate our application process, that you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please complete the Candidate Accommodation Request Form.
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or a suitable combination of education, experience, and training
- 15+ years of software engineering experience with significant hands-on technical leadership
- Recognized technical authority within a large-scale technology organization
- Experience driving architecture across multiple complex products and platforms
- Experience operating at internet-scale consumer workloads
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native design
- Strong knowledge of modern public cloud technologies and platform engineering practices
- Experience leading large-scale architecture modernization efforts
- Experience improving reliability, scalability, performance, and engineering productivity
- Experience designing and delivering AI/ML-powered applications and platforms
- Experience with GenAI, LLM integration, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, agent architectures, and AI platform capabilities
- Understanding of AI governance, model observability, evaluation frameworks, and responsible AI principles
- Experience applying AI to customer experiences and internal engineering productivity
- Strong business acumen and ability to connect technical investments to measurable business outcomes
- Exceptional communication and influence skills
- Ability to build alignment across organizations without direct authority
- Experience mentoring senior engineers, Principal Engineers, and future technical leaders
- Experience leading through ambiguity and solving complex organizational and technical challenges
- Experience with digital commerce, marketplaces, or retail technology
- Experience scaling global consumer-facing applications serving millions of users
- Expertise in cloud cost optimization and FinOps practices
- Experience with experimentation platforms, recommendation systems, personalization engines, or search technologies
- Participation in technical communities, open-source initiatives, or industry thought leadership
Nike Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Nike and has not been reviewed or approved by Nike.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with a company match is complemented by options such as a Mega Backdoor Roth and deferred compensation for eligible earners. Financial coaching and structured savings programs support long-term financial security.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — An Employee Stock Purchase Plan with a stock discount sits alongside broad-based equity vehicles like RSUs and non-qualified stock options. These avenues expand wealth-building opportunities beyond base pay.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave includes maternity and paternity time, recently expanded in the U.S. to 16 weeks and extended to part-time retail teammates. Additional supports include childcare assistance at select locations and family-building benefits such as fertility, surrogacy, and adoption.
Nike Insights
What We Do
At NIKE, Inc., we innovate to serve athletes*. Every teammate - from coder to creator - plays a role in making these athletes’ dreams real. Our tech, data, and digital teams push limits every day, building the future of sport and the tools that drive it. Here, curiosity is fuel. Innovation is the game plan. Different perspectives keep us on the offense. You’ll solve challenges worth tackling, grow fast and belong to a team that backs you to do the right thing. Bring your drive. Bring your bold. Let’s move the world, together. Take your first step at nike.com/careers * If you have a body, you’re an athlete.
Why Work With Us
At NIKE, Inc., your dedication fuels the future of sport. There is a sense of pride that comes from representing an iconic brand and shaping its future. Here, we treat every day as a new opportunity to push boundaries, ask tough questions and share whole-hearted convictions. We are a team – united by the belief that anything is possible.
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