Apple Hires Two Former Nike FuelBand Engineers to the iWatch Team

Apple is amassing a talented group of people for its iWatch team and has just hired two former Nike FuelBand engineers to the talent pool, reports 9to5Mac.

Ryan Bailey now lists his position on LinkedIn as a Mechanical Design Engineer at Apple. His former title at Nike was Senior Test & Validation Engineer, Digital Sport, which included “Wearable devices and consumer electronics product development,” as noted on his profile page.

Another hire is Jon Gale, who now lists his title as Sensing Systems Engineer at Apple. Formerly with the FuelBand team, Gale says he “personally owned the delivery of firmware for the Nike FuelBand product line,” based on his previous title as a Senior Firmware Engineer.

Numerous other FuelBand employees have slowly made their way to Apple, including the likes of Jay Blahnik last August and former FuelBand designer Ben Shaffer last September.

Back in April, Nike dismantled their FuelBand team, firing most of their employees and ending development of future products.

Despite the sudden shutdown of the FuelBand division, Nike’s CEO noted in a TV interview the company is “excited to see where that relationship goes going forward,” referring to their work with Apple over the years.

Sources have told media outlets such as Re/code Apple will debut its iWatch this October. Note to self: do not buy a watch until October.