Lead Data Scientist – Sports Research Lab – Innovation

Position Type
Full Time
Career area
Design
Location
1 Bowerman Drive, Beaverton, Oregon 97005, United States
Job
R-94583

Become a Part of the NIKE, Inc. Team

NIKE, Inc. does more than outfit the world’s best athletes. It is a place to explore potential, obliterate boundaries and push out the edges of what can be. The company looks for people who can grow, think, dream and create. Its culture thrives by embracing diversity and rewarding imagination. The brand seeks achievers, leaders and visionaries. At NIKE, Inc. it’s about each person bringing skills and passion to a challenging and constantly evolving game.
The Nike Sport Research Lab (NSRL) is a multidisciplinary team of researchers, innovators, scientists, data scientists, and engineers who lead with science to make athletes
* measurably better. We deliver validated insights and capabilities that inform the future of Nike products and services.

The Lead Data Scientist partners with researchers in biomechanics, physiology, perception, and related disciplines, along with data scientists, engineers, product managers, and other innovation partners. This role reports to the Director of Data Science and provides hands‑on technical leadership within multidisciplinary project teams.

• If you have a body, you are an athlete.

Nike Sport Research Lab is looking for an experienced Data Scientist who combines strong algorithmic skills with practical project leadership and genuine curiosity about human movement and performance. This person can independently solve difficult technical problems, guide project-level decisions, and help other contributors deliver high-quality work. They understand that sensing and machine-learning systems are only useful when their outputs can be connected to the physical and scientific realities they are intended to represent.

The successful candidate is comfortable working with ambiguous research and innovation questions, translating them into rigorous analytical plans, and collaborating across scientific and technical disciplines. They remain hands‑on in analysis and software development while communicating assumptions, limitations, trade-offs, and findings clearly. This is a Lead role focused on technical execution, project coherence, and mentorship, rather than organization-wide data science strategy.

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Engineering, Biomechanics, Kinesiology, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience and training.
• 6+ years of relevant applied experience post-degree in data science, machine learning, statistical modelling, signal processing, computer vision, or a related technical field, including ownership of complex projects.
• Strong Python proficiency and experience building tested, maintainable, reproducible analytical software using modern version control, code review, and development practices.
• Experience working with complex measurement data, such as time-series signals, IMUs, wearable sensors, image or video data, camera-based systems, or multimodal datasets, with rigorous signal processing, computer vision model evaluation and validation.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with human movement, biomechanics, physiology, sport science, pose estimation, sensor fusion, and cloud data platforms is strongly preferred.

You will provide hands‑on technical leadership for complex projects that use sensor and camera data to understand human movement and performance. You will develop rigorous analytical solutions, guide project execution, and work closely with scientific and engineering partners to deliver credible, useful, and reusable…