Rakuten

Vice Manager, Container as a Service - Cloud Services Department (CLSD)

Tokyo, Japan Full time

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 Cloud Services Department (CLSD) at Rakuten Group provides high-quality cloud infrastructure and platform services to application developers across Rakuten. Our mission is to enable secure, scalable, and efficient digital innovation. 

We deliver key domain services, including compute, storage, core infrastructure components, databases, container platform, observability, and gateway solutions, empowering Rakuten application teams to focus on their core business objectives. 

 

Position: 

Why We Hire 

Rakuten Group's business is growing rapidly, and our private cloud is growing rapidly along with it. 

To support this growth, numerous ambitious and exciting projects are underway. We are looking for individuals who enjoy challenges and are eager to pursue growth together. We welcome ambitious individuals who envision future promotion to Manager or Senior Manager. 

Furthermore, we welcome those who can propose new ideas with flexible thinking, utilizing both internal and external technologies, without being constrained by existing frameworks. 

 

Position Details 

Key Responsibilities

1) Stable System Operations 
- Lead engineers and project managers to ensure a stable operation of system infrastructure 

- Quality control of App/Middleware/OS release operations for the system 

2) Task & Project Management 
- Planning, progress management, risk management, and reporting for each task and project 

- Review and approval of release operations, support in obtaining approval for release operations from senior managers 

3) Accounting Operations & Server Resource Allocation 
- Monthly billing report: Report usage of our services for each user to charge to the users. Also, investigate the usage detail and explain to the users when they make inquiries 

- Monthly Server Resource Adjustment: Aggregate user demand forecasts and calculate the necessary number of servers 

- Server Resource Allocation: Allocate procured servers to users according to priority 

- Monthly Sales & Cost Analysis: Create KPI reports on sales, costs, and profits for each service of our services 

- Yearly Budget Planning: Carry out budget planning for the next fiscal year based on user usage forecasts and the Group's plans 

- When launching new services or products, conduct sales and cost simulations and analysis 

4) HR Tasks 

- Support employee evaluation and feedback: Regular 1-on-1s, goal setting, performance reviews, and providing feedback 

- Support training and career development: Assistance in improving employee skills and formulating career paths 

- Planning and execution of team-building activities 

- Support for recruitment activities: Creating job descriptions, evaluating candidates, arranging, conducting, and evaluating interviews 

5) Product Strategy Formulation 
- Formulation of product vision and roadmap: Envisioning a long-term product vision and creating a concrete roadmap 

- Understanding and reflecting user needs: Collecting user feedback and incorporating it into the product 

- Industry research and competitive analysis: Researching and analyzing industry trends and new technology developments 

- Planning and execution of new features: Developing and implementing plans for new features and services 

- Creation of medium- to long-term project plans for each product 

- Management of product backlog 

- All other general tasks necessary for product maintenance and growth 

6) Other General Non-Engineer Operations 

- Responding to user inquiries 

- Management of user surveys 

- Management of daily engineering tasks (operational tasks): Prioritization, assignment, and progress management 

- Other tasks arising within the Group 

 

Work Environment 

- 23 members 

- Language: Go, Python, Groovy, Shell Script 

- Infrastructure: Private Cloud (Kubernetes, Baremetal, VM, Container) 

- Provisioning/Operation: Ansible, multiple inhouse tools written in Go and operator pattern (redhat operator framework, etc.), jenkins 

- Monitoring: prometheus, cortex, grafana, kibana, Datadog, PagerDuty 

- CI/CD: Jenkins, in-house python tool 

- Knowledge Tool: Confluence 

- Project Management: JIRA 

- Communication Tool: Slack, MS Teams, Viber  

 

Mandatory Qualifications: 

- 3+ years of managerial experience, including personnel evaluation based on budget and system management 

- 3+ years of "operations" experience with large-scale mission-critical systems (e.g., cloud infrastructure, banking, telecommunications) 

- 3+ years of development experience using statically-typed languages 

- 3+ years of work experience in a large corporation 

- Individuals who resonate with Rakuten's corporate philosophy and "Rakuten Shugi" and wish to work for Rakuten long-term 

- Native-level Japanese proficiency and the ability to engage in high-context communication

- Ability to create and explain documents covering the necessary items for an RFP (Request for Proposal) 

- Experience in managing Scrum/Waterfall projects, OR experience as a member of a Scrum/Waterfall development team and the ability to manage Scrum/Waterfall development 

- Someone who loves to proactively act, by thinking what needs to be done, what should be prioritized, and what should be improved, without being passive 

- Ability to communicate in a way that does not create unnecessary conflicts, using soft communication and phrasing, and conveying information accurately to avoid misunderstandings 

 

Desired Qualifications: 

- AI Skills: Proficient in using Claude Code, Gemini, etc., and exploring new ways of working 

- PC Skills: Proficient in using shortcuts and can efficiently complete tasks 

- Good communication skills, able to handle effective communication with Members, Service Providers and Tenants 

- Enjoy proposing new mechanisms for team improvement 

- Understand basic Excel functions such as sumifs, xlookup, table, pivot table, and spill functions 

- Skills and experience in Go/Python  

- Degree holder in Computer Science 

- Knowledge and experience with Cloud (GCP, AWS, Azure, etc.), Docker/Container/Kubernetes

#engineer #technologymanagement #technologyplatformdiv 

Languages:

English (Overall - 4 - Fluent), Japanese (Overall - 4 - Fluent)