Principal Engineer, Identity & Authorization

Nike•Beaverton, OR

3d•$149,100 - $313,900•Hybrid

About The Position

This Principal Engineer partners with Security, Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, and Product Engineering leaders to shape authorization capabilities used across Nike's global technology organization. We're looking for a Principal Engineer to help define the future of authorization at Nike. This role will lead the transformation from fragmented, application-specific access controls to a modern, enterprise-wide authorization platform where access decisions are defined as policy, evaluated centrally, and consistently enforced across applications, APIs, cloud platforms, data systems, and business processes. The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in authorization architecture, distributed systems, and identity platforms, along with a passion for solving complex security and business challenges through scalable engineering solutions. They are recognized technical leaders who can influence enterprise strategies, establish architectural standards, and align diverse engineering organizations around a shared vision for identity and access. Success in this role requires the ability to translate business intent, security requirements, and governance controls into reusable authorization services and policy frameworks that enable agility, strengthen security, and reduce operational complexity across Nike's global technology ecosystem.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education, experience, or training in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Security, or a related field.
8+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise-scale software platforms and distributed systems.
Deep expertise in authorization architectures, identity and access management, authentication, identity governance, and privileged access concepts.
Experience designing centralized policy decision services, policy enforcement architectures, and policy-as-code solutions.
Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy, mentor engineers, and drive architectural transformation across multiple organizations.
Hands-on software engineer who actively writes and maintains production code — this is a build-and-deploy role, not an architecture-only.
Demonstrated coding depth in a backend or platform language, with direct experience deploying distributed systems into live, high-availability, multi-region production environments.

Responsibilities

Lead the evolution of Nike's authorization strategy and platforms, helping transform how access decisions are defined, managed, and enforced across the enterprise.
Define and drive the enterprise authorization architecture, establishing standards, patterns, and engineering practices that enable consistent access control across applications, APIs, cloud platforms, and business services.
Lead the transition from application-specific roles, permissions, and user exceptions to centralized policy decision services and reusable authorization capabilities.
Design and implement policy-based authorization solutions that allow business, security, and compliance requirements to be expressed as code, tested automatically, and deployed through modern engineering workflows.
Partner with Security, Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, and Product Engineering teams to embed authorization, governance, and identity controls directly into the software development lifecycle.
Influence the future of Identity as Policy at Nike by developing shared services, frameworks, and platforms that support workforce, consumer, partner, and machine identities.
Mentor engineers, guide architectural decisions, and help teams adopt scalable authorization and identity capabilities that reduce operational complexity while improving security and compliance outcomes.
Identify opportunities to modernize legacy access management approaches and create policy-driven solutions that enable faster delivery of secure digital experiences across Nike's global technology ecosystem.
Write production code and apply enterprise-level coding practices to build and deploy the core authorization services.