Lead Software Engineer - Forward Deployed Engineering, ITC

This role is for a Lead Software Engineer within Nike's Supply Chain and Planning Technology (SCPT) organisation, supporting Demand Planning and Pricing (DPP) platforms. The role reports to a Senior Engineering Manager and collaborates with Demand and Assortment Planners, Principal Engineers, Product Managers, and cross-functional partners. The engineer acts as the technical leader for their squad, guiding and mentoring engineers while delivering scalable platform capabilities.

• Drive the technical roadmap for the domain in partnership with Product and Architecture, translating complex business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Lead architectural design decisions and technical reviews across systems.
• Design and build highly scalable backend systems and microservices using Java, Spring Boot, and cloud-native patterns.
• Develop robust data-driven RESTful APIs and event-driven services for enterprise-scale platforms, including resilient distributed systems using messaging platforms like Kafka.
• Design and implement data pipelines and integrations across systems, working with modern data platforms such as Spark, Databricks, and Delta Lake.
• Contribute to data quality, consistency, and availability across services, and strategise ontology-based explainable systems for high-accuracy decisions and insights.
• Lead development and deployment of services on cloud platforms (AWS preferred), driving adoption of CI/CD pipelines, observability, and DevOps best practices.
• Establish and enforce high standards in coding, testing, and system reliability; continuously improve performance and scalability; promote platform-first thinking.
• Mentor engineers across levels, foster a strong engineering culture, and partner with business, product, and engineering leaders to align priorities.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools, identify AI/GenAI opportunities for workflows and user experiences, and establish responsible AI usage best practices while maintaining engineering fundamentals.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 8–12 years of experience building scalable backend systems.
• 2+ years in a technical leadership role, guiding teams and driving architecture decisions.
• Domain expertise in implementing solutions for retail apparel industry-specific demand planning, forecasting, and pricing capabilities.
• Strong expertise in full-stack software development and systems architecture.
• Proven experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, including API design, integration, microservices, database systems, data modelling, security, compliance, and data privacy.
• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture and messaging systems such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Exposure to data engineering ecosystems such as Spark or Databricks.
• Strong fundamentals in SQL and data modelling.
• Understanding of batch and real-time data processing patterns.
• Exposure to frontend technologies such as React or Angular.
• Experience working on enterprise-scale platforms and integrations.
• Familiarity with distributed systems and external service integrations.
• Solid experience with cloud infrastructure and deployment patterns and cloud-native design principles.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, containerisation (Docker/Kubernetes), and DevOps practices.

• Demonstrated strength in data engineering and integration, including data pipelines and system integrations.
• Experience with modern data platforms such as Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake, or equivalent.
• Ability to contribute to data quality, consistency, and availability across services.
• Experience strategising and designing ontology-based explainable systems for high-accuracy decisions and insights.
• AWS cloud platform experience (preferred for cloud deployment).