Nike seeks a hands-on engineering leader with deep expertise in cloud-native platforms, Kubernetes, and Crossplane. The ideal candidate has a strong background in building and scaling managed database platforms, with direct experience in AWS, GCP, and Azure database services (DynamoDB, RDS, MySQL, Postgres, Aurora, OpenSearch, MemoryDB). You are passionate about platform-first architecture, developer experience, and operational excellence. You thrive in complex, multi-cloud environments, and have a proven track record of leading distributed teams to deliver resilient, extensible systems.
• 15+ years in software engineering, with at least 5 years leading platform teams in large-scale, cloud-native environments (retail or tech preferred)
• Deep hands-on expertise with Kubernetes and Crossplane as universal control planes for infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management
• Strong experience architecting, deploying, and operating managed database services: DynamoDB, RDS, MySQL, Postgres, Aurora, OpenSearch, MemoryDB
• Proven ability to build and scale platforms, including declarative APIs, composable abstractions, and self-service developer workflows
• Familiarity with GitOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, and cloud provider APIs (AWS, Azure)
• Demonstrated leadership in geographically distributed teams, mentoring, and talent development
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field (Master’s preferred); equivalent experience considered
• Professional certifications in cloud, Kubernetes, or database technologies a plus
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in engineering, 5+ in platform leadership
• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s or equivalent experience preferred
• Certifications: AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Database (optional but valued)