Lead Software Engineer - Network as a Product

Sits within CIE Automation, part of Core Infrastructure Engineering (CIE) Physical Plane, the organisation responsible for the global network connecting Nike's distribution centres, retail stores, offices and data centres. The postholder builds the control plane that regional network teams use to manage network changes, working alongside the Lead Engineer to provide technical leadership across platform strategy and control plane engineering. The role partners closely with network engineers as they move from command-line operations to declarative infrastructure as code, and collaborates across Cloud Core Engineering.

• Design and build the providers, controllers and compositions that turn declared intent into device configuration using Kubernetes, Crossplane, NetBox, NetWeave and GitOps patterns, and help shape how the architecture evolves.
• Own the Cisco control path by building and extending the microservices that manage IOS-XE and NX-OS devices over NETCONF, including model handling, idempotency and failure behaviour that makes automation safe for production.
• Shape the intent model with network engineers, defining the YAML specifications used to express intent and finding the right balance between useful abstraction and the flexibility needed for real network requirements.
• Build the verification layer, developing pre-change validation to confirm the network is in the expected state and post-change verification to prove the change delivered the intended outcome without unintended impact.
• Make automated change auditable by ensuring the platform produces the evidence required for Change Control and CAB review, including diffs, pre- and post-change validation, rollback paths and blast radius.
• Provide a strong developer experience, giving engineers a fast, reliable way to develop, test and validate against the control plane locally without needing to touch production.
• Migrate production infrastructure onto the control plane one device class at a time, without disruption and in a way that regional network teams trust and adopt.
• Bring SRE practice into the network by defining SLIs and SLOs, introducing RED and USE metrics, building operational dashboards and using error budgets, toil reduction and blameless retrospectives to measure how well the platform is working.
• Extend the platform into self-healing and closed-loop operations, building towards drift detection, automated remediation of known failure patterns and guardrails that prevent automated actions from making a bad situation worse.
• Coordinate delivery across regional network teams, Cloud Core Engineering and external partners to land changes end to end, set technical priorities and clear blockers.
• Apply AI tooling to areas such as code generation and review, test scaffolding, documentation, operations and diagnostics, while being clear about where it adds value and where it does not.
• Raise the engineering bar by defining standards for code reviews, testing, repository structure, documentation and release processes, and making review expectations across SD-WAN, infrastructure as code, operational excellence and CaaP alignment concrete.
• Improve how the team works by challenging processes that create friction or rely on manual knowledge and establishing better, more repeatable ways of delivering engineering work.
• Grow the engineers around you, helping strong network engineers who are earlier in their software journey become confident, independent contributors both technically and professionally.

• Production experience with Go, or strong Python experience with a genuine appetite to work in Go.
• Hands-on experience with Crossplane providers, compositions and composite resource definitions.
• Strong experience with NETCONF, YANG and RESTCONF across IOS-XE and NX-OS, combined with hands-on knowledge of Catalyst 9000 and Nexus platforms and their configuration, operational behaviour and failure modes.
• Deep understanding of routing and switching, including BGP, OSPF, VLANs and data centre fabrics, with the ability to reason about the impact of changes on live production networks.
• Experience designing schemas, APIs or intent models that other engineers consume, with sound judgement around abstraction, usability and long-term maintainability.
• Practical experience designing declarative delivery pipelines, release processes and testing strategies for infrastructure code, using approaches such as controller test harnesses, virtual labs and staged environments.
• Experience designing microservices service boundaries, contracts and versioning, including resilient behaviour when dependent services are unavailable.
• Ability to set technical direction and influence experienced engineers without formal authority, particularly when introducing new engineering or automation practices.
• Ability to explain complex technical platforms and their value to engineers, program managers, business stakeholders and senior leadership without losing the necessary technical nuance.
• Experience using AI tooling thoughtfully within engineering workflows, with a clear view of where it improves quality, speed or reliability and where it does not.
• Strong opinions on how modern network control planes and network automation should evolve, including the role AI can play, with the ability to turn that thinking into technical direction.
• An automation-first mindset and enough networking credibility to work effectively with senior engineers across routing, switching and network infrastructure.
• Ability to build production Kubernetes control planes and translate complex network concepts into clean, declarative abstractions that let network engineers express intent in YAML without needing to understand the underlying controller or device configuration.
• Understanding of where automation adds value and where it does not, and the ability to help move the organisation away from accumulated manual changes towards consistent infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Technical leadership capability, including setting platform direction, establishing engineering standards, mentoring engineers developing their software practices and remaining hands-on in building the platform, without people-management responsibility.