Manager, Software Engineering

Nike • Beaverton, OR

3d

About The Position

NIKE is seeking an AI-Native Engineering Manager to lead the Athlete Data Platform team. The team builds the services, schemas, and data systems that maintain a consent-aware athlete record, plus the intelligence layer and data pipelines that support personalization across Nike Run Club (NRC), Nike Training Club (NTC), and sport-science research surfaces. The manager leads a full-stack squad spanning backend services, mobile SDK integration, and data pipelines, and is accountable for turning the platform foundation into reliable, shipped value.

The role combines people leadership with technical and operational ownership. The manager hires, develops, and performance-manages engineers; sets the team's AI-Native engineering practices; partners on roadmap and written specifications; and owns architecture, data quality, testing, latency, availability, cost, on-call load, and consumer service-level agreements. The role also works across engineering, product, data science, sport science, privacy, security, and app teams to deliver consistent, safe, consent-aware athlete data and productionize research-based models.

The position reports to the Director of Engineering. The manager partners with Principal and Lead Engineers and represents the platform in architecture reviews and executive forums.

Requirements

• At least 5 years in technology and software engineering roles, including at least 3 years in people management or team leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education, experience, and training.
• Demonstrated fluency in AI-Native engineering, including specific recent examples of AI tools and practices accelerating real delivery on teams led.
• Ability to distinguish and apply agents, multi-turn conversations, MCP integrations, deterministic workflow orchestration, composable skills, deterministic hooks, spec-driven development, and evaluation harnesses, with sound judgment about their effectiveness.
• Experience leading engineering teams in a highly matrixed environment and driving outcomes across partner organizations not directly managed.
• Track record leading full-stack squads delivering consumer-scale platforms across backend services, mobile SDK integration, and data pipelines, with ownership of availability, latency, and cost.
• Hands-on technical grounding in modern backend stacks such as Go, Kotlin/Java, or Python; ConnectRPC/gRPC/REST; event-driven pipelines using Kafka, Kinesis, SNS, or SQS; and cloud-native deployment on AWS or an equivalent platform.
• Working familiarity with at least one mobile platform, iOS/Swift or Android/Kotlin, sufficient to lead technical reviews across backend and client boundaries.
• Experience partnering with Data Science, ML, or Sport Science teams to move models from notebook to production, including data contracts, feature pipelines, evaluation, and safe rollout.
• Working familiarity with activity and health data such as GPS traces, sensor time series, HR/HRV, workout aggregates, and training load, and with associated consent, privacy, and compliance expectations.
• Strong track record hiring, developing, and performance-managing engineers across levels, including difficult feedback conversations and succession planning.
• Proven ability to lead technical design reviews, align squads on service contracts and data models, and write proposals that Director- and VP-level stakeholders can make decisions against.
• Strong written and verbal communication across engineering, science, product, and executive audiences.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate the Athlete Data Platform team, including hiring, onboarding, developing, and performance-managing a full-stack squad of senior and mid-level engineers and a Lead or Principal individual-contributor partner.
• Set and assess the team's AI-Native engineering practices, including agents, workflow orchestration, MCP integrations, skills, hooks, spec-driven development, and evaluation harnesses; measure their effect on delivery and replace practices that are not effective.
• Partner with Principal Engineers, Product, Sport Science, and Data Science to set the quarterly roadmap and translate platform strategy into deliverables, using written specifications reviewed before implementation.
• Own the platform's technical and operational health, including service architecture, data-model quality, test coverage, latency, availability, cost, on-call load, and the consumer SLAs relied on by NRC and NTC squads.
• Make and defend build-versus-buy decisions for athlete data capabilities.
• Partner with NRC and NTC iOS and Android squads on SDK contracts, client caching, and offline/online reconciliation to maintain a consistent athlete record across apps and devices.
• Partner with Sport Science and Data Science to productionize models based on Nike Sport Research Lab research, including data contracts, feature pipelines, evaluation, consent-aware inference, and safe progressive rollout.
• Partner with Security, Privacy, and Data Governance to protect athlete location, health, and biometric data and ensure consent-aware, compliant handling.
• Represent Athlete Data Platform in cross-MAC architecture reviews, platform-readiness sequencing, and executive forums, translating between engineering, science, and business audiences.
• Raise the team's technical bar through structured feedback, design-review coaching, and mentorship across levels.
• Lead technical design reviews, align teams on service contracts and data models, and author written proposals for Director- and VP-level stakeholders.

Benefits

• Interview-process accommodations are available, including screen readers, sign language interpreters, accessible and single-location in-person interviews, closed captioning, and other reasonable modifications.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager