Distinguished Engineer - GaME (Geographies & Marketplace Experiences)

Nike•Beaverton, OR

About The Position

Nike is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to define the technical future of its global marketplace and digital consumer ecosystem within GaME (Geographies & Marketplace Experiences). The role shapes technology strategy and architecture for consumer experiences and platforms including Nike App, SNKRS, Nike.com, marketplace and partner experiences, personalization, commerce services, and emerging AI-driven shopping experiences. As a senior technical leader, this person influences engineering organizations across architecture, product innovation, platform modernization, AI adoption, and operational excellence, helping Nike move toward AI-powered, agent-driven commerce. The Distinguished Engineer will define GaME’s long-term technology vision and roadmap; lead adoption of AI capabilities and engineering practices; shape scalable marketplace and commerce architectures; guide cloud efficiency and FinOps; improve developer productivity and software delivery; and establish standards for resilience, security, performance, and observability. The role also evaluates emerging technologies, advises senior executives, and represents Nike in technical communities. The position reports within the GaME technology organization and works closely with Engineering Directors, Product Directors, Distinguished Engineers, Principal Engineers, Data & AI leaders, Architecture teams, business leadership, and global technology platforms.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; suitable combinations of education, experience, and training will be accepted.
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 with 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.
Experience driving measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, performance, and engineering productivity.
Significant experience designing and delivering AI/ML-powered applications and platforms.
Experience with generative AI, 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 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.
Proven ability to mentor senior engineers, Principal Engineers, and future technical leaders.
Experience leading through ambiguity and solving highly complex organizational and technical challenges.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the long-term technology vision for GaME and partner with engineering, product, design, and architecture leaders on a multi-year technology roadmap.
Influence architectural decisions across portfolios and domains, lead cross-functional technical initiatives, and advise senior executives on emerging technology trends and investments.
Lead architecture and adoption of AI capabilities, including recommendations, personalization, search, conversational commerce, shopper assistants, content generation, and agentic experiences.
Establish practices for responsible AI, model lifecycle management, prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and AI observability.
Integrate generative AI and agent technologies into consumer experiences, developer tooling, and operational workflows.
Shape the architecture of Nike App, SNKRS, Nike.com, and marketplace platforms, supporting direct-to-consumer, partner, wholesale, and future marketplace models.
Design scalable systems for global launches, high-demand events, promotions, inventory visibility, and transactional workloads while simplifying architecture and enabling product innovation.
Set technical strategy for cloud efficiency and FinOps; optimize cloud spending, infrastructure utilization, reliability, security, and customer experience.
Establish engineering standards for performance optimization, workload efficiency, sustainable scaling, and measurable value from technology investments.
Lead adoption of AI-assisted software development, automation, intelligent tooling, platform engineering, and AI-powered coding, testing, quality assurance, and operational workflows.
Improve developer productivity and delivery velocity while maintaining quality and reducing friction in the engineering ecosystem.
Establish standards for architecture, security, resilience, and observability, and drive reliability improvements for mission-critical consumer experiences.
Champion platform engineering, event-driven architectures, cloud-native development, and site reliability engineering.
Lead technical reviews of complex architectural challenges and help teams resolve large-scale performance, scalability, and reliability issues.
Evaluate emerging AI, cloud, commerce, and platform technologies for potential competitive advantage.
Represent Nike in technical communities, conferences, and industry forums, and cultivate relationships across Distinguished Engineer and Principal Engineer communities.