Senior Design Manager, Footwear & Apparel Expression, Nike Basketball Signature Athlete

About the Role

We’re looking for an exceptional Senior Design Manager, Footwear and Apparel Expression (Color, Graphics, Materials), who can bring experience, creative problem-solving, and a clear point of view to help shape what’s next for Nike Basketball. Inspired by the signature athlete, you’ll help define the visual expression of Nike Basketball across footwear and apparel—bringing together sport, style, and performance in a modern, meaningful way. This role requires broad exploration, thoughtful curation, and a clear creative point of view.

The ideal teammate is a visionary design leader with exceptional taste, a refined aesthetic perspective, and a deep commitment to craft. They pursue elevated solutions with a sharp eye for detail, proportion, and storytelling, creating products that resonate with consumers on and off the court. With strong cultural awareness and an understanding of emerging trends, they will shape distinctive expressions that raise the bar for creativity, desirability, and aesthetic excellence.

Responsibilities

• Translate consumer knowledge and insights into creative solutions and narratives.
• Articulate design intent and strategy.
• Generate a broad range of concepts and solutions for each project.
• Lead, coach, collaborate, and onboard Design teammates.
• Contribute and align to shared team culture and behaviors.
• Act as a catalyst to make connections with other Design groups.
• Create concepts and developments on a range of color, materials, and graphic designs for the basketball signature athlete.
• Elevate new techniques and narratives to influence new product expressions.
• Partner with key stakeholders cross-functionally on the product creation process to achieve product excellence.
• Help bring the vision for the future of Nike Basketball products to life.
• Unleash creativity with a focus on industry-leading design while leveraging consumer insights.
• Collaborate with the Senior Creative Director to build the design direction.
• Mentor other designers as a team leader.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Design or related field. Will accept any suitable combination of education, experience, and training.
• At least 8 years of experience in design or a related field.
• Exceptional knowledge of design, art, and fashion, as well as a passion for sport and youth culture.
• Expert skills in Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Experienced with presentation programs: Keynote, PowerPoint, Acrobat, etc.
• Expert knowledge of manufacturing processes and materials.
• Ability and passion to lead, collaborate, and motivate others.
• Strong collaboration skills with the ability to connect the dots across teams.
• Open-minded, receptive to candid feedback, and a good listener.
• Passion and curiosity to learn about basketball and the athlete (being a basketball player is not required).

To be considered for this role, you must provide a design portfolio focused on expression work on wearable product (upload a PDF or provide a URL and password if applicable).

Who You’ll Work With

As a Senior Design Manager in Expression (Color, Materials, and Graphics), you will work hand in hand with a large project team of professionals including engineers, researchers, scientists, marketing, testing, sustainability, materials, and costing teams. You will collaborate within the design community (concept, footwear, apparel designers) and mentor other designers. This role reports directly to the Senior Creative Director, and you will manage a Lead Expression Designer.