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.

Within TPD, the Cloud Platform Supervisory Department (CPSD) develops and manages Rakuten's state-of-the-art cloud platform, empowering global scalability and accelerating innovation across its diverse business units.

Department Overview

The Data Platform Department (DPD) at Rakuten Group develops and maintains a comprehensive data platform, empowering over 70 Rakuten services with solutions for data ingestion, discovery, governance, analytics, and querying. We support data-driven decision-making across one of Japan's largest data ecosystems, providing the tools and infrastructure to support key domains such as Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, and Business Intelligence.

Position:

Position Details

The Team Lead, Data Delivery, is responsible for providing strategic direction and operational oversight for the Data Delivery team. This role manages three distinct functions: Project Management (Delivery), Product Management (Strategy), and Data Engineers (Operation).

The lead ensures the successful, high-quality, and timely delivery of the products (data lake house and data marts) while maintaining robust data integrity, compliance, and effective communication with internal stakeholders and users.

Key Responsibilities

This role's responsibilities are divided into three core areas:

1) Team & People Management

- Supervision: Directly manage and mentor the Project Manager, Product Manager, and Data Engineers

- Performance: Conduct regular one-on-ones, set performance goals, and manage career development for all direct reports

- Workflow: Coordinate team activities to ensure seamless hand-offs between Product Strategy (vision/requirements), Project Delivery (execution), and Data Engineering (testing/governance)

2) Strategic & Operational Oversight

- Process Specialist: Design, implement and optimize highly standardized workflow processes for new data onboardings, data change requests and user access requests including approval processes and technical implementation

- Product Strategy: Oversee the Product Manager's activities, ensuring the product roadmap aligns with business objectives and market needs

- Project Delivery: Review and approve the Project Manager's schedules, budgets, and resource plans to ensure projects are delivered on time and within scope

- Data Governance: Champion data governance and compliance by ensuring the Data Engineers testing, auditing, and documentation procedures are rigorous and effective

- Risk Management: Identify and mitigate cross-functional risks, dependencies, and roadblocks that could affect product delivery or data integrity

3) Stakeholder Communication

- User Communication: Manage the overall strategy and execution for user communications related to the Data Warehouse product, including release notes, training materials, and outage notifications. Handle escalations and engage with management on the user side if needed

- Cross-Functional Alignment: Serve as the primary point of contact for senior internal partners (e.g., Engineering, Sales, Leadership) regarding product status, data delivery and team capacity

- Reporting: Prepare and present regular status updates, performance metrics, and compliance reports for senior management

Mandatory Qualifications:

- Minimum of 5 years of related professional experience in a technical or product management environment, with at least 3 years in a leadership or managerial capacity (Team Lead, Project Manager, or similar)

- Bachelor's degree required, master's degree preferred in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or Information Management

- Equivalent work experience will be considered in lieu of a degree

- Language: business to native level of Japanese (JLPT N1), advanced business level English

- Deep understanding of the Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) and Project Management methodologies (Agile/Scrum preferred - ideally using the tools JIRA/Confluence)

Desired Qualifications:

- Knowledge of Data Warehouse (DW) concepts, data modeling, ETL/ELT processes, and data quality/governance frameworks

- Exceptional collaboration, interaction, and persuasion skills to network with senior internal/external partners and advise on complex matters

- Ability to work on problems of diverse scope, using sophisticated analytical and problem-solving techniques to devise creative and effective solutions

#engineer #BusinessManagement #technologyplatformdiv

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