Senior Software Engineer Lead – Catalog Management Department, AI Services Full-time

Job Description:

Business Overview

Rakuten Group, a global technology leader based in Japan, provides innovative solutions that enrich the lives of millions worldwide. Our Technology division is pioneering in leveraging cutting-edge technologies to deliver exceptional experiences across our services.

Department Overview

The importance of catalog data is increasing as it serves as a hub and data platform that connects products and corporate data handled within Rakuten services. By managing abundant and accurate catalog data and deploying it as master data across Rakuten services, it plays the role of core data that accelerates new service development.

The Catalog Management Department is committed to building data creation processes, collecting and expanding catalog data, and improving quality in order to expand providing services that meet and exceed the expectations of Rakuten’s customers.

Under the mission of creating the best catalog data and improving user experience, we provide the power of Rakuten’s design, technology, and operations to provide high-quality catalog data that is at the core of our business strategy. This contributes to Rakuten’s vision of “Empowering people and society through innovation.”

Position:

Why We Hire

Catalog Management Department has been playing a pivotal role in Rakuten, serving as the data expert behind critical business decisions and solutions. As we continue to expand, both in terms of data generation and data enrichment solutions, we are seeing a rapid increase in the number of clients we serve. To support this growth, we are seeking talented leaders who are excited to contribute to our mission and vision for the future.

As Rakuten scales its business, we need individuals with a challenging spirit – those who are eager to drive platform enhancements, manage complex systems, and tackle innovative projects in a fast-paced environment. If you are passionate about designing, architecting, and implementing cutting-edge technological solutions, this is the place for you. We want engineers who are ready to play a pivotal role in transforming the platform to meet the ever-evolving demands of the business.

We are also focused on long-term product development in managing the entire development process – from design to release and operation. At the same time, we strive to build a platform that is scalable and sustainable while actively preventing technical debt. This is a unique opportunity for engineers to have a significant impact on both business expansion and the evolution of Rakuten’s core technologies.

Join us in pursuing these responsibilities and challenging yourself to achieve organizational missions and personal skill development.

Position Details

As the Senior Software Engineer Lead for the Global Catalog Platform, you will play a critical role in designing, developing, and maintaining a high-performance, scalable platform that powers Rakuten’s core services. In this leadership position, you will guide a team of talented engineers, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and ensure that the platform meets the highest standards of reliability, performance, and scalability. You will be instrumental in addressing complex challenges, driving continuous improvements, and shaping the long-term success of the platform.

This role is ideal for an individual with a deep technical background, a passion for solving complex engineering problems, and a drive to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

The main responsibilities are as follows:

– Partner with engineering teams to define, establish, and drive the technical vision, ensuring that all team initiatives align with broader organizational and business goals.

– Collaborate closely with teams in multiple regions – Japan, China and India: work with a peer Engineering Manager to define joint goals execution plan.

– Lead by example in architecture, design, development, code reviews, and quality assurance, ensuring technical excellence across the board.

– Design and build scalable full-stack solutions that solve user scenarios across different partners and service topologies.

– Interact with stakeholders as well as teams to understand the business needs and problems, help and aid them in implementation of Catalog solutions with generative AI.

– Provide technical guidance to other engineers and act as mentor.

– Take initiative to identify and fix bottlenecks.

– Set a high quality bar, ensuring quality design reviews and robust engineering practices for automated testing, code coverage and operational excellence.

Work Environment

– Programming languages: Java, TypeScript, Python, Shell Script

– Platform: Hadoop, Azure, Google Cloud and internal private cloud in some cases

– Databases: BigQuery, BigTable,HBase,MySQL, Hive

– Web Applications: Node.js, Spring Boot

– Monitoring: Cloud Monitoring

– Others: Cloud Dataflow (ETL), Docker (Container Technology), Github, Continuous Integrations (CI/CD), Kubernetes & Cloud Run (Deployment Environment)

Mandatory Qualifications:

– 7+ years of experience in software development, with a strong foundation in full-stack engineering and building scalable, high-performance systems.

– Expertise in cloud platforms such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS, or Azure, and hands-on experience with multi-cloud environments.

– Extensive experience in data engineering, including large-scale data processing, data pipeline design, and serverless batch processing.

– Proven track record of end-to-end product development, from system design and implementation to testing, deployment, and production support.

– Demonstrated ability to lead and mentor engineering teams, drive technical decision-making, and encourage collaboration across cross-functional teams.

– Expertise in providing technical guidance, conducting code reviews, and establishing best practices to ensure high-quality deliverables.

– Strong experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and a commitment to maintaining high software quality standards.

– Ability to support production systems, including incident management and root cause analysis for issue resolution.

– Excellent communication skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and business stakeholders.
– Both fluent level of Japanese and English

Desired Qualifications:

– Experience with Generative AI, including model deployment, fine-tuning, and integration into production systems.

– Hands-on experience applying AI/ML technologies to enhance data quality and enrich data solutions.

– Strong adaptability and a commitment to continuous learning, staying current with the tech stack in cloud technologies, AI, and data engineering.

– Ability to lead development with a business-driven mindset, balancing technical needs, schedule requirements, and business objectives.

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Languages:
English (Overall – 4 – Fluent), Japanese (Overall – 4 – Fluent)