Director Software Engineering, Runtime and cross plane Engineering, ITC

Nike; Karnataka; On-site; INR 6,000,000 - 12,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Nike India Technology Center seeks an experienced engineering leader to drive the Cloud Runtime and Control Plane teams. You will oversee two specialized groups delivering managed cloud compute, network, storage, and edge services, partnering with global infrastructure consumers and product owners.

The role emphasizes scalability through automation, SRE practices, and declarative infrastructure. You will mentor engineers, manage budgets, and align platform capabilities with business goals while

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive engineering experience, with at least 5 in a leadership role.
• BS/MS in CS/EE or related technical field.
• Proven ability to lead teams through cloud transitions and scale platform engineering.
• Strong collaboration with infrastructure consumers, security, and product management.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision for our cloud infrastructure platform across geos.
• Translate strategies into actionable delivery plans and roadmaps.
• Lead and grow the local engineering team of contributors and managers.
• Build multi-cloud control planes using Terraform, Crossplane, and Kubernetes Operators.

Skills

Leadership

Cloud networking

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD

Education

BS/MS in CS/EE

Tools

Crossplane

Jenkins

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Job description

Who You’ll Work With

You will report to the Senior Director of Cloud Runtime and Control Plane Engineering and manage two specialized engineering teams. You'll collaborate extensively with cloud infrastructure consumers across the organization, partnering with development teams, application owners, and business units who rely on your platform services. You'll work closely with other infrastructure teams to ensure seamless integration and avoid operational silos.

Who We Are Looking For

We're seeking an experienced engineering leader to drive our Cloud Runtime and Control plane engineering team in our India Technology Center. You will help drive engineering efforts around developing the Kubernetes. Based control plane foundations as well as development and operations of several critical control planes enablingtwo specialized teams focused on provising managed cloud compute, network, storage, and edge functionality. The ideal candidate is an engineer at heart combining deep technical expertise with proven leadership skills to deliver best-in-class agility, availability, resiliency, security, and performance. You'll need both the technical depth to architect enterprise-scale solutions and the leadership abilities to guide teams through complex transformations using metrics-driven, evidence-based approaches. This role requires a strong emphasis on operational excellence, with focus on scaling through automation to enable toil reduction and minimize human error across all platform operations

Key Qualification

• 15+ years of progressive engineering experience (with at least 5 in a leadership role)
• BS/MS degree in a technical discipline (CS/EE/ etc)
• Proven experience leading specialized engineering teams through major technology transitions, particularly in cloud networking and compute governance
• Track record of building and scaling platform engineering organizations with focus on self-service capabilities
• Experience partnering with diverse stakeholders including infrastructure consumers, security teams, and technical product management
• Demonstrated ability to develop talent, manage budgets, and remove delivery blockers in complex, multi-team environments
• Experience working with globally dispersed teams working in a matrixed organization
• Deep expertise in AWS with strong network focus, including advanced VPC design, subnetting, routing, and security groups
• Extensive experience with Azure integration and networking architectures
• Hands-on proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools including Terraform and Crossplane for multi-cloud resource management
• Strong expertise in Kubernetes container orchestration, including cluster management, networking, and application deployment patterns
• Strong background in CI/CD pipeline design using Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and GitHub integration
• Experience with Platform Engineering, DevOps practices, and Configuration Management
• Knowledge of CDN, DNS, containerization technologies, Edge Platform, and Infrastructure as a Service Platform technologies
• Prior experience migrating from on-premises to Cloud Native infrastructure with focus on network and container transformation
• Ability to establish best-practice software engineering methodologies for global, 24x7, high-volume, high-availability environments using metrics-based KPIs
• Strong focus on operational excellence with emphasis on automation-driven scaling to reduce toil and minimize human error
• Strong sense of ownership with focus on ensuring customer and user success
• Experience developing software and infrastructure roadmaps to meet business goals for availability, resiliency, and performance
• Proven capability to lead innovation and strategic direction in cloud and edge compute design and implementation
• Experience implementing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and practices to improve system reliability and operational efficiency
• Strong collaboration skills to ensure cloud engineering capabilities meet emerging business requirements

What You’ll Work On

You will help drive engineering efforts around developing the Kubernetes. Based control plane foundations as well as development and operations of several critical control planes enablingtwo specialized teams focused on provising managed cloud compute, network, storage, and edge functionality.

Your Responsibility Includes

• Work with counterparts in other Geos to define and execute the technical vision for our cloud infrastructure platform
• Translate business strategies and objectives into strategic technical direction and delivery plans
• Present vision, strategies, roadmaps, and progress to Senior and Executive Leadership
• Lead and grow local engineering team of individual contrutors and managers
• Drive transformation from unmanaged to managed cloud resources using declarative technologies.
• Implement policies to ensure consistent, secure, and efficient resource utilization
• Implement automation strategies focused on toil reduction and elimination of manual, error-prone processes
• Create self-service platforms and automation capabilities through Platform Engineering and DevOps practices
• Foster a culture of operational excellence through monitoring, alerting, and continuous improvement practices
• Architect and deliver lifecycle management solutions for cloud resources using technologies which reconcile and perform drift detection (terraform, K8s operators, crossplane, etc). Resources under management will include compute, network, storage (including enterprise backup), dns, and cdn.
• Design and implement cloud governance policies and automation to ensure secure, reliable, efficient, and compliant resources.
• Build multi-cloud control plane architectures using Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform, Crossplane, and Kubernetes Operators.
• Build and manage Kubernetes-based container orchestration platforms for scalable application delivery
• Collaborate with Architecture and Product Management to develop platform capabilities leveraging our core technology stack
• Modern observability tooling to enable best practices for operational excellence
• Partner with Corporate Security to implement security-first cloud governance frameworks
• Manage CI/CD automation through Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and GitHub integration strategies
• Identify and assess technology trends, articulating strategic technology recommendations
• Ensure successful delivery of roadmap items through cross-functional problem-solving
• Leverage AI technologies as a force multiplier – especially in toil reduction
• A key aspect of this position is 24x7 oncall and operational excellence