Lead - Full Stack Engineer

About Rakuten:

Rakuten Group, Inc. is a global leader in internet services that empower individuals and businesses. Our diverse portfolio spans e-commerce, fintech, digital content, and communications, all united by our mission to create value through innovation and entrepreneurship. We are committed to building a vibrant ecosystem where users can discover, connect, and transact seamlessly. Join us in shaping the future of digital services!

The Opportunity:

We are seeking a highly experienced and influential Full Stack Lead Staff Engineer to join our [Specific Domain/Team, e.g., FinTech Platform] team. In this pivotal role, you will be instrumental in shaping the technical direction, architecture, and development practices for critical systems that power [briefly describe what the team does, e.g., Rakuten's global payment infrastructure, our next-generation e-commerce search experience, our internal cloud platform].

As a Full Stack Lead Engineer, you will blend hands-on technical expertise with strategic thinking and technical leadership. You will work closely with engineering teams, product managers, and other stakeholders to deliver robust, scalable, and innovative solutions that directly impact millions of users worldwide. This is an exceptional opportunity for a technical leader who thrives on solving complex problems, mentoring others, and driving significant technical initiatives.

Exp : 6 years - 10 years

Key Responsibilities:

1. Technical Vision & Architecture: Lead the design and evolution of complex, highly scalable, and resilient systems. Define architectural patterns, review designs, and ensure alignment with long-term technical strategy and business objectives.
2. Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a technical authority and go-to expert for your domain. Mentor and coach engineers across multiple teams, fostering technical growth, best practices, and a culture of engineering excellence.
3. Hands-on Development & Problem Solving: Contribute to critical codebases, solve the most challenging technical problems, debug complex issues, and ensure high-quality, performant, and maintainable solutions.
4. Strategic Planning & Road mapping: Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to define technical roadmaps, identify strategic opportunities, and anticipate future technical challenges. Drive initiatives that improve system reliability, performance, and developer productivity.
5. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work effectively with product managers, designers, and other engineering teams to translate business requirements into technical solutions. Drive consensus on technical decisions and facilitate effective communication across stakeholders.
6. Operational Excellence: Champion best practices in system observability, monitoring, incident response, and post-mortems. Ensure the operational health and reliability of critical services.
7. Innovation & Research: Stay abreast of industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices. Evaluate and recommend new tools and technologies that can enhance our systems and development processes.

Required Qualifications:

1. Education: Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
2. Experience: Experience in software development, with a significant portion in a senior or lead engineering role.
3. Deep Technical Expertise: Proven expert-level proficiency in [mention 1-2 core technologies relevant to the team, e.g., Java/Kotlin extensive experience with distributed systems, microservices architecture, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
4. Develop dynamic and responsive front-end user interfaces using technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Angular
5. System Design: Demonstrated ability to design, build, and maintain large-scale, high-performance, and fault-tolerant systems. Strong understanding of architectural patterns, data modeling, and API design.
6. Problem-Solving: Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to break down complex technical challenges and drive practical solutions.
7. Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
8. Leadership & Influence: Proven ability to influence technical direction, mentor engineers, and drive technical initiatives without direct managerial authority.

Preferred Qualifications (Bonus Points!):

1. Experience working in a large-scale, international organization.
2. Familiarity with specific technologies relevant to Rakuten's ecosystem (e.g., Kafka, Kubernetes, Docker, specific databases like PostgreSQL, Cassandra, DynamoDB, etc.).
3. Experience in [specific industry domain, e.g., FinTech, E-commerce, AdTech, Cloud Infrastructure].
4. Contributions to open-source projects or technical publications.