Context: Nike approached Paul ~3 to 6 months after he applied into their cybersecurity program, initially for a Mobile Device Management, or MDM, Architect role. He’d first met Nike’s team at the 2015 RSA hiring event at the Masonic Temple, where he met Sam Taylor, the hiring manager and future boss.
The interview experience
Nike flew me up on Alaska Airlines, gave me a rental car with the single most outdated navigation system I’ve ever used, and put me up the night before at The Nines, a high-end boutique hotel downtown. More on that navigation system later. It was my second time in Portland. The family had visited once before and driven out to Seaside for a long weekend.
The next day I showed up with a full slate: 1:1s, panel interviews, and lunch with the hiring manager, Sam Taylor, at a pizza place nearby.
The pivot, during the interview
The panel interview is the one that stood out. Two people of note were on it. Adam Sealey would later become my manager and eventually, after I left, Nike’s CISO. Shawna Turner was an amazingly talented security engineer. The prompt was essentially a no-win scenario:
“Your team is suddenly directed, on a CISO commitment, to replace every firewall in all of Nike with Palo Altos. How would you approach it?”
I dug in: inventory, how the existing firewalls were managed, timelines, dependencies. It became clear it was mission impossible as framed. I called it the “Nike Kobayashi Maru,” after the Star Trek no-win test, asked a lot of hard questions, and gave my honest read rather than pretending it was doable. That impressed them.
Then came the cascade. At lunch, Sam told me I’d impressed everyone so much I could take my pick of Expert Architect roles: Cloud, MDM, IAM, and more. And after lunch, mid-interview, the recruiter called to say they thought I might be an even better fit for their Expert Cyber Security Strategist role, and asked if I’d extend the day to meet that team. I did. First a sit-down with Dale Compton, then Chris Bates, whom I met offsite on the way to the airport at a McMenamins in Beaverton, off Cedar Mill. Chris comes back in a big way later. He’s part of how I landed at SentinelOne.
The offers, 5 to 6 of them
It went well enough that I effectively had my pick of five or six Expert roles. They mixed the architect tracks, such as Cloud, MDM, and IAM, with the Cyber Security Strategist role the recruiter had pivoted me toward.
The one I took
The recruiter called the next day for my decision so she could write it up. I first asked for Cloud Security Architect & Strategist. Then, after much discussion with my wife and family, I chose the Expert Cyber Security Strategist role, because it meant owning three to six of Nike CIS’s security strategies outright. In a nice irony, the Strategist role was the very one I’d originally submitted my application to back in August or September. We set a start date of January 2016.
The travel-home farce
The cursed rental navigation was my undoing on the way out. It literally tried to route me by having me teleport the car ten feet to the left and drop twenty feet down onto the freeway. I reached the airport late, and Alaska wouldn’t board me. The only offer was a flight to Seattle to overnight in the airport, so I booked myself onto Southwest to San Jose and flew there. My wife and kids picked me up late that night and drove me home.
Key people
- Sam Taylor, the hiring manager, told Paul he could take his pick of roles.
- Adam Sealey, on the panel. Later Paul’s manager, and eventually Nike’s CISO, after Paul left. linkedin.com/in/adamsealey
- Shawna Turner, on the panel and a standout security engineer. linkedin.com/in/shawna-turner
- Dale Compton, the Strategist-team interview.
- Chris Bates, met offsite at a Beaverton McMenamins, and a key figure in Paul’s later move to SentinelOne.