Principal Software Engineer

WHO YOU WILL WORK WITH

You will be reporting into the Software Engineering Director, who will guide you to grow and build your career path. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will be tasked with working closely with multiple engineering squads across a business-aligned domain in order to solve a wide range of business and technology related problems. Working with Architecture, you will help define the technical design and implementation roadmap across multiple solutions and will work with engineering leadership to ensure we resource and equip our squads with the right expertise to deliver those solutions. Your partners will include Scrum teams, Engineering and Architecture, as well as Product and Business leadership. Through our communities of practice, you will interact with engineers from multiple other squads, and will play a key role in elevating Nike’s engineering culture, standards and best practices, advocating for engineering excellence and innovation.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR

As a principal software engineer in Partners and Sports Marketing engineering organization, you will be part of designing and delivering, best in class commerce experiences for our customers worldwide. We invest and develop advances in technology and employ the most creative people in the world, and then give them the support to constantly innovate, iterate and serve consumers more directly and personally. Our teams are innovative, diverse, multidisciplinary and collaborative, taking technology into the future and bringing the world with it.

You will join an extended team of fellow engineers that nurture an engineering culture with its roots in diversity, inclusion and equality. As a team we embrace a DevOps culture and have a can-do mentality. We own the products we build and support. The candidate will have a depth of knowledge and experience in software engineering paradigms. The role will provide the opportunity to identify solutions and solve complex business and technical problems that impact multiple squads.

• Excellent computer science fundamentals, including algorithms and data structures. Expert proficiency in object oriented programming & design.
• 14+ years of software engineering experience as an individual contributor developing custom software
• 5+ years hands-on experience implementing and supporting modern software architectural principles and patterns (microservices, REST, domain-driven design, Devops etc).
• Strong knowledge of serverless cloud computing (AWS – preferred), containerisation, CI/CD, automated testing.
• 5+ years hands on experience with distributed cloud systems (node, typerscript, Java, Python, EC2, Lambdas, Elasticsearch or AWS/Google Cloud equivalents).
• Experience working with NoSQL data stores like Cassandra, DynamoDB, or MongoDB
• Experience with front-end web application technologies (javascript, CSS, HTML5, React/redux, etc.)
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude, Codex, or similar, using them to accelerate design, coding, testing, debugging, and documentation while maintaining code quality and review standards.
• Demonstrated proficiency on agentic development patterns, and curiosity in leveraging AI agents to plan, execute, and verify routine engineering tasks under clear human oversight.
• Excellent influencing, verbal and written communication skills.
  Demonstrated ability to build and maintain relationships with multiple peers and cross-functional partners
• Responsible for staying up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in backend development. You continuously evaluate new tools, frameworks, and techniques, and assess their potential impact on the team's productivity and the quality of the final product.
• Demonstrated ability and experienced professional, who not only possesses deep technical knowledge but also excels in leadership and mentorship.
• Responsible for setting technical standards, providing guidance, and ensuring the successful delivery of projects.
• Experience with agile teams in product model.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent experience

WHAT YOU WILL WORK ON

• As a Principal Software Engineer you will collabrate with product and engineering leadership on the creation and management of roadmaps and provide guidance into approaches to the implementation and realization of roadmaps.
• You’ll work with multiple multi-functional engineering teams at Nike to build the future of sport across timezones by driving cross-domain alignment and technical delivery of major capabilities across value streams along with solution options, assessing their relative merits and risks to figure out the best solution.
• Being a Principal software engineer, you’ll provide technical leadership in the evaluation, conceptualization, design, and development of major new capabilities and participate in the establishment of core platforms and build a capability maturity vision to progress and improve our platforms ensuring architect, develop, test and deploy sophisticated solutions.
• Along with mentoring software developers on the team through code reviews and ensuring that all the work meets industry standards, you’ll work on technical solutions that serve other engineering, data, or business facing teams.