Principal Software Engineer, Developer Platform

About the role

Nike is looking for a Principal Software Engineer within its Engineering Excellence team, which partners with Directors, Architects, Product Managers and engineering squads across Nike Global Technology to deliver unified developer platforms. The role reports to a Senior Director and spans foundational technology, AI-native SDLC and developer experience. It suits someone with architectural depth and technical authority who leads complex distributed systems, influences cross-functional technical strategy and mentors senior engineers.

Key responsibilities

• Architect and own the most critical parts of Nike's developer platform consolidation, shaping standards, tools and technical culture.
• Design end-to-end architecture for unified developer platforms covering GitHub, Nike AI Control Plane, Databricks analytics systems and the Pulse developer portal.
• Lead technical strategy for AI-native SDLC, building frameworks where agents automate work with human oversight at key checkpoints.
• Consolidate fragmented legacy tools by evaluating systems, defining migration paths and replacing them with reusable solutions.
• Establish traceability models linking business requirements through development workflows to production deployments.
• Mentor senior and lead engineers through design reviews and architectural guidance.
• Champion communities of practice in Observability, API design, AI/ML, Kubernetes, Cloud and OpenSource.
• Influence the multi-year platform roadmap and build the case for strategic technical investments.

Required profile

• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent combination of education, experience or training.
• Proven track record of leading complex distributed systems and mentoring senior engineers.

Required skills

• Expert-level proficiency in Java, Node.js, Golang, React or JavaScript, with a record of building highly available, scalable distributed systems.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with AWS or equivalent cloud platforms, Kubernetes, container runtimes and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.
• CI/CD ecosystems, developer platform tooling (GitHub Actions, Artifactory, Backstage/Pulse) and developer experience optimization.
• Ability to lead technical architecture reviews, set engineering standards and influence decisions across teams.