Job Description
Business Overview
The Technology Platforms Division (TPD) drives the growth of Rakuten's ecosystem by delivering innovative, high-quality technology platforms characterized by integrated control and strategic partnerships.

Department Overview
Incentive Platform Department (INPD) is responsible for developing and operating the Rakuten Point and Rakuten Coupon. We develop and manage Rakuten PointClub and other point-related web products, which are among the most popular sites in Rakuten. We will drive the improvement to maximize Rakuten Point value and contribute to the Rakuten Ecosystem. By the time you finish reading this, hundreds of thousands of points transactions have been processed and many users visit our web and app services. We want to work with a person who has a great passion for our services and products.

Position
Why We Hire
Our company is experiencing rapid growth, and with it, the paramount importance of service reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. This role is crucial for leading our SRE team in maximizing the reliability and performance of our web frontend and backend systems.

As an SRE Team Lead, you will spearhead the construction and improvement of our infrastructure across public and private clouds. You will take ownership of the quality, delivery, and reliability of our products. You will work closely with development teams, product managers, and project managers, leading the formulation and execution of our infrastructure strategy. By implementing SRE practices and driving continuous system and process improvements, you will be instrumental in supporting our business growth from a technical perspective. We are seeking a visionary leader who can inspire and guide our team to new heights of operational excellence.

Position Details

• SRE Strategy & Roadmap Development: Define and drive the execution of the SRE strategy and technical roadmap to enhance service reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Observability Platform Leadership: Lead the management and improvement of monitoring, alerting, logging, and tracing tools, driving the establishment of optimal observability environments for each product.
• Service Quality Definition & Achievement: Define Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and plan/execute improvement activities to achieve them. Drive the adoption and operation of Error Budgets.
• Performance & Latency Improvement: Identify bottlenecks in service performance and latency, and direct/oversee the team in proposing and implementing solutions.
• Incident Management & Troubleshooting: Act as an incident commander during production outages, leading rapid restoration efforts. Conduct Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and drive the implementation of preventative measures.
• Operational Efficiency & Automation: Promote automation of operational processes to reduce toil, building an efficient and scalable operational framework.
• Team Management & Development: Provide technical guidance, mentorship, and performance evaluations for SRE team members, contributing to the overall skill enhancement and performance of the team.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Strengthen collaboration with product development teams, infrastructure teams, security teams, and other relevant departments, fostering a DevOps culture and strong cooperative relationships.

Mandatory Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in SRE, infrastructure engineering, or a related field, with at least 2 years in a team lead or technical lead capacity.
• Experience in building and operating production systems in public cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.) or private cloud environments.
• Extensive experience in designing, building, operating, and scaling Kubernetes environments.
• Deep knowledge and hands-on experience in building and operating modern monitoring, alerting, and logging tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog).
• In-depth knowledge of UNIX-like operating system internals and/or networking.
• Deep knowledge of IP network systems and protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, etc.) and troubleshooting experience.
• Experience in building automated workflows using CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD).
• Experience in developing operational automation tools and scripts using scripting languages such as Shell, Python, etc.
• Strong communication, negotiation, and collaboration skills to effectively articulate complex technical issues and align with internal and external stakeholders.

Desired Qualifications

• Web application development experience.
• Experience as a Software Engineer for Test (SET) or knowledge of test automation.
• Deep knowledge and practical experience in Observability, and a strong drive to improve services leveraging SLIs/SLOs.
• Experience in implementing and operating Error Budgets, or a proven track record in toil reduction initiatives.
• Experience working with cross-cultural global teams in different locations.
• Japanese skills: Business-level reading and writing proficiency (while internal communication is primarily in English, some documentation or communication may occur in Japanese).

Other Information
Additional information on Location
Rakuten Crimson House (Tokyo)

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Languages
English (Overall - 3 - Advanced)