Engineering Manager [B2B SaaS]

[About the Company]

The company's mission is "to advance humanity by reinventing the mechanisms of value creation" and aims to create an environment where people can focus on creating new value through the use of natural language processing and AI technologies.

AI delivers information directly related to business operations, thereby enhancing the information sensitivity of the organization. In addition, the company offers two SaaS products: "Anews," which encourages the conception of business ideas and their development within the organization, and "Astrategy," a market research service that provides suggestions by structuring necessary information according to the organization and its operations.

Currently, its main target is major manufacturing R&D in Japan, and more than 30% of the Nikkei 225 companies have already adopted the system. In the future, starting with manufacturing R&D, the company plans to expand to domestic enterprise companies, then to Japanese companies as a whole, and even to global companies.

The company completed a Series C financing of 1.1 billion in August 2022.
In February 2024, they were selected for the "GENIAC (Generative AI Accelerator Challenge) Project" promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and NEDO, and have begun to develop their own LLM with 100 billion parameters!
The company has grown to 100 employees and is looking for more personnel to achieve further growth!

【Job Description】 

【About the Company】
The company supports corporate transformation by leveraging cutting-edge Generative AI and LLM (Large Language Model) technology.

The company's strength lies in its ability to develop a purely domestic LLM entirely from scratch. In May 2024, they released a Japanese-specialized LLM with 100 billion parameters, making it one of the largest in Japan.

While most companies only fine-tune overseas models or use OSS, the company designs and builds its model from the ground up. This results in the highest standard of performance optimized for the Japanese language and business domain. Furthermore, the model significantly suppresses hallucinations, allowing for safe operation under the company's direct control.

They aim to be more than just an "AI-utilizing company"; they strive to be an "AI-creating company," supporting Japan's industrial competitiveness through technology.

Leveraging this technical capability, they operate a SaaS business providing an AI agent for engineers in the manufacturing sector, and a new PaaS business offering an implementation support platform for business AI.

Targeting enterprise clients since its founding, the company has seen adoption by over 300 firms, including 30% of the Nikkei 225. They plan to expand from manufacturing R&D to other enterprise clients in Japan, and eventually to global corporations.

In October 2024, they completed their Series D funding round, raising ¥4.5 billion and bringing their cumulative funding to ¥8.8 billion. With a workforce of 150 employees, they are now recruiting personnel to drive further growth.

【Current Challenges】
・The company recently completed its Series D funding round, securing ¥4.5 billion, and its product growth strategy is focused on implementing multi-agent functionality.
・There is an urgent need to strengthen the development framework to drive two parallel goals: ensuring the stable operation and improvement of existing product features, and actively exploring the value of new agents.
・Given this backdrop, the company must move beyond the gradual improvement of its existing development framework. They need to strategically and flexibly update their systems to advance development, which requires a reinforcement of management to lead this transformation.

【Your Role】
You will be primarily responsible for the People Management and Technology Management of the engineering team within the B2B SaaS product development organization, aligning the engineering organization's activities with the business strategy through collaboration with the Product Manager (PdM) and Product Marketing Manager (PMM).

Your duties will involve judging priorities and taking action based on the state of the business and organization, including goal setting/evaluation, coaching, assignments, team structuring, and resource adjustment.

In the short term, the company expects you to be involved in the reskilling of engineers for Generative AI and show interest in contributing to the design of new AI Agent products.

■Responsibilities
You will be responsible for managing the development teams to maximize their output across the following domains. This includes managing team operations and results, nurturing and evaluating talent, facilitating technical decision-making, and building consensus.

Frontend Domain
・Planning and designing new features, along with frontend development and performance improvement using Vue.js.
・Mobile application development using Flutter.
・Improving the developer experience through refactoring and enhancing the development infrastructure.
・Designing and implementing common product components.

Backend Domain
・Designing and developing APIs using Ruby on Rails/Python.
・Designing and developing databases.
・Designing and developing architecture using the AWS environment.
・Designing and developing batch processing using Python.
・Designing, developing, and improving features that use Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology.

*The scope of your duties may change to encompass other development-related tasks.

【Team Structure】
The Product Engineering Unit consists of 26 members (with plans for further expansion):
・VPoE (Vice President of Engineering): 1
・EM (Engineering Manager) & Lead Engineers: 2
・Lead Engineers: 3
・Engineers: 18
*As the company anticipates further expansion, they plan to entrust you with strengthening and designing the team structure as a manager.

【Technical Stack and Environment】
▼Your Core Product
・Languages/Frameworks: Vue.js, TypeScript, Flutter, Ruby on Rails, Python, Terraform
・Databases: RDB (Amazon Aurora MySQL), Elasticsearch (AWS OpenSearch)
・Infrastructure (AWS-Centric): Docker, and a range of AWS services including ECS, Cognito, SQS, SES, Step Functions, IAM, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, etc.
・Monitoring/Tools: Datadog, SendGrid, etc.

▼Other Products (Reference)
・Languages/Frameworks: Vue.js, TypeScript, Python, Go, Terraform
・Databases: DynamoDB, Elasticsearch (AWS OpenSearch)
・Infrastructure: Docker, AWS (ECS, Cognito, Lambda, etc.)
・CI/CD/Monitoring: Datadog, CircleCI, etc.

【Position Highlights】
■Deep Dive into Advanced Search/Recommendation Technology: You can get involved in highly advanced search and recommendation technology. Although the company's product is B2B SaaS, its nature as a news application demands sophisticated search and recommendation capabilities, giving you the chance to tackle high-difficulty development challenges, all while working with the company's proprietary LLM.

■Collaborative Feature Team Development: Engineers use a feature-based development model, collaborating closely with Product Managers (PdM), designers, BizDev, and Research teams. This environment allows you to work alongside professionals from diverse roles, focusing consistently on solving customer challenges.

■Flexible and Mature Work Environment: The company supports a flexible work style that fits your lifestyle. With a high ratio of engineers, the company inherently understands the importance of engineering. The average age is 36.7, and many members have enterprise experience, fostering a calm and stable atmosphere for development.

【Working conditions & treatment】

■Salary increase (twice a year / May and November)

【About remote work】
■Basically, fully remote work
　Residence must be in Japan (no full remote work while residing overseas)
■Flexible remote/working options (no restrictions on the number of times you can come to the office)
　Each employee works while using the system according to his/her own circumstances.

There are people who work full remotely from Sendai, Kyoto, Osaka, etc., people who enjoy working while on vacation, foreign nationals who return to their home countries for a few weeks to work, and people who mainly come to work, making for a diverse work style.

【Welfare】
■Customer facing allowance (flat monthly amount of 20,000 yen *included in monthly salary)
　Free use for self-improvement and customer value improvement
　(purchase of books/attendance at seminars/equipment, etc.)
■Lump-sum allowance for preparation for remote work (flat rate of 50,000 yen in the first paycheck)
　Provided as an expense for preparation for remote work

【Others】
■Periodic health checkups (all paid by company)
■Influenza vaccination
■PC of your choice provided
■Free drinks such as water/coffee/carbonated drinks/alcohol provided at the office
■Office Glico installed

【Education and Skill Development】
■Onboarding for 5 days after employment is available
■Monthly study day system (for own skill improvement and learning purpose)

【Internal Communication】
■Weekly company-wide online meeting
■Monthly social gathering (offline, some online)
■Semi-annual kick-off (hybrid of online and offline meetings)

【Holidays and Vacations】
■123 days off per year
■Saturdays, Sundays and national holidays (2 days off per week)
■Year-end and New Year vacations
■Paid leave (granted at the time of employment *Number of days granted depends on the month of employment)
■Prenatal leave
■Childcare leave

【Required】
*Meet all of the following
・5+ years of hands-on development experience
・Experience leading development from a technical perspective as a Tech Lead or Lead Engineer
・Development experience in both frontend and backend
・Practical experience in team management, member development, evaluation, and goal setting

【Preferred】
・Experience as an engineering manager or reporting directly to a VP of Engineering
・Experience contributing to machine learning development projects, primarily focused on natural language processing
・Experience participating in technical communities, with enthusiasm for output such as speaking engagements and blog writing
・Experience building and improving products in collaboration with Product Managers and designers