Principal Engineer, Identity & Authorization

This Principal Engineer role leads the transformation from fragmented, application-specific access controls to a modern, enterprise-wide authorization platform  role partners with Security, Enterprise Architecture, Platform Engineering, and Product Engineering leaders to shape authorization capabilities used across Nike's global technology organisation. The engineer will define the future of authorization, building scalable policy-based solutions and mentoring engineers to adopt these capabilities.

• 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.

• 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 organisations.
• 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.

• Open to remote work except in South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia.
• Position based at Nike's worldwide campus headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
• 4/1 hybrid schedule:
  Mondays–Thursdays in office, optional to work Fridays from campus or home office.

• Annual base salary ranges from $ in lowest geographic market to $ in highest geographic market. Actual salary varies based on location, qualifications, skills and experience.