Job Description:

Business Overview

Rakuten Group, under the mission of "Empowering People and Society through Innovation," operates a wide range of businesses both domestically and internationally, including e-commerce, travel, digital content, telecommunications, FinTech, and professional sports.

Department Overview

The Business Support Development Department (BSD) is a development organization that supports the diverse business operations and systems of the Rakuten Group through the power of products, AI, and data. It optimizes complex business processes and provides the foundation that supports business growth.

Within BSD, our team is a product development organization specializing in the DX of the Customer Support (CS) domain. Our mission is to improve customer experience, service quality, and operational productivity - achieved through the planning, development, and continuous improvement of products serving end users, merchant partners, and internal CS operators.

Our product portfolio includes an inquiry management tool, an AI-powered response assist chat tool, and an inquiry analytics dashboard. We work with massive datasets and complex operational workflows, leveraging technology to fundamentally evolve how customer support is delivered at Rakuten scale.

Position:

Why We Hire

Large-scale services such as Rakuten Ichiba and Rakuten Travel demand ever-higher standards of quality, speed, and productivity in customer support. Alongside improving inquiry handling, increasing self-resolution rates, and boosting operator efficiency, delivering new support experiences powered by generative AI has become a critical organizational priority.

Against this backdrop, we are growing our engineering team to accelerate both ongoing product improvements and the development of new AI-driven features. We are looking for engineers who can take technical ownership of CS products, collaborate closely with product and operations, and help us ship impactful solutions at scale.

Position:

Position Details

Software Engineer responsible for the design, development, and operation of customer support products.

You will work closely with Product Managers, QA engineers, and CS stakeholders to build reliable, scalable systems that serve operators and end users alike. As a core member of a cross-functional team, you will contribute to the technical quality and continuous improvement of our CS product suite - from AI-powered chat tools to real-time analytics platforms.

Responsibilities

1) Product Development

- Design, develop, test, and operate CS products serving operators, merchants, and end users

- Build and maintain RESTful APIs and microservices powering inquiry management, AI assist, and analytics systems

- Develop responsive frontend interfaces using React, Redux Toolkit, and Next.js

- Ensure high code quality through thorough code reviews, testing, and engineering best practices

2) Technical Collaboration

- Work with Product Managers to translate business requirements into implementable technical specifications

- Collaborate with QA engineers to define test strategies and ensure release quality

- Participate in architecture and design reviews, contributing perspectives on usability and operational feasibility

- Share updates and surface blockers through daily standups, chat, and team meetings

3) AI & Innovation

- Participate in the planning, evaluation, and integration of generative AI, ML, and NLP-powered features into CS products

- Actively leverage generative AI tools to improve development productivity and code quality

- Explore and champion new technologies that deliver value to the team and its users

4) Continuous Improvement

- Monitor production systems, identify bottlenecks, and drive performance improvements

- Contribute to CI/CD pipeline improvements for reliable and efficient deployments

- Engage in post-release KPI monitoring and iterate based on data and user feedback

Mandatory Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

- Over 4 years of hands-on Java development experience (design, development, testing, release, and operation)

- Strong expertise in Spring Framework (Spring Boot, Spring MVC, Spring Security) and frontend frameworks (React, Redux Toolkit, Next.js)

- Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs

- Solid understanding of microservices architecture

- Experience with relational and NoSQL databases

- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices

- Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes

- Strong problem-solving and debugging skills

- Excellent communication and teamwork abilities

- Japanese and English: both at conversational level or above

Desired Qualifications:

- Experience with advanced CI/CD practices such as blue-green deployments or canary releases

- Knowledge of service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd

- Proficiency in database technologies such as MySQL, MongoDB, or Redis

- Experience with Node.js and related frameworks (TypeScript, Express.js, Fastify)

- Understanding of security best practices in DevOps (e.g., secrets management, vulnerability scanning)

- Practical experience leveraging generative AI for business improvement and development process optimization

- Experience building or operating tools in the customer support, CRM, or contact center domain

- Experience with data analysis and KPI monitoring using SQL or BI tools

- Experience in Agile/Scrum development environments

Other Information:

Additional information on Location

Rakuten Crimson House (Head office)

Additional information on English Qualification

TOEIC Score 800 above or possess equivalent abilities

#engineer #AI #commerce #RakutenIchiba #Java

Languages:

English (Overall - 3 - Advanced), Japanese (Overall - 3 - Advanced)

Software Engineer - Backoffice Business Support Section, Business Support Development Department (BSD)