Back-End Engineer

Job Description

About the Company

Chemican is a cloud-based SaaS platform that helps manufacturers manage chemical substances in their products. Japan’s manufacturing industry—often called the backbone of the country—still relies heavily on manual and specialist-driven chemical management, which is complex and under-digitized.

Mismanagement of chemicals can lead to environmental pollution, health issues, and industrial accidents. To prevent such incidents, companies are legally required to track and evaluate the chemical components used in their products. However, many still depend on manual processes handled by a limited number of specialists.

Our mission is to change this. We’re bringing DX (digital transformation) to the chemical industry through a powerful SaaS platform that automates and streamlines chemical substance management—an untouched, blue-ocean domain.

 

About the Product

Chemican combines cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise to digitize and simplify chemical management workflows. Already trusted by major Japanese enterprises, we’re now preparing to expand globally.

Our platform replaces analog, error-prone practices with AI-powered automation, contributing to a safer and more efficient manufacturing ecosystem.

 

Role Overview

Due to global trends such as SDGs and tightening regulations—including Japan’s major revision of the Industrial Safety and Health Act starting in 2024—demand for Chemican is rapidly growing.

To keep up with this momentum and prepare for international expansion, we’re looking for a software engineer to join our core product team. You’ll work directly with our CTO on feature development and system architecture for Chemican.

This is an exciting opportunity to build scalable, secure functionality for a mission-critical SaaS product while exploring areas like AI, ML, and global compliance.

 

What You’ll Work On

• Develop new features for Chemican’s SaaS platform
• Design and implement chemical regulation screening tools
• Build chemical risk assessment functionality
• Use ML and Generative AI to extract and analyze hazardous substance data from SDS
• Develop product enhancements tailored for international markets

 

Tech Stack & Team

• Languages: Go, Python
• Frontend: Next.js, React, Vue.js, TypeScript
• Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Database: PostgreSQL, BigQuery
• Team: 3 engineers currently (expanding soon)
• Tools: GitHub, Slack

 

Why Join Us

• Join a fast-growing startup with global ambitions
• Play a key role in the backend development of a mission-critical product
• Shape the product as a core team member in a seed-stage environment
• Flexible, remote-first work culture
• Opportunities to explore diverse areas: backend, infra, R&D, AI, and more
• Help solve real-world problems in a massive industry (~¥40T market)
• Build technology that directly improves safety, compliance, and operational efficiency in manufacturing

 

Qualifications

Must-Haves

• 5+ years of professional experience developing web applications for in-house products
• Strong knowledge and enthusiasm for web application development
• Solid understanding of secure programming practices in web development
• Experience working collaboratively in a team using version control systems like Git
• No chemistry background required — many of our team members thrive without prior knowledge of chemistry

 

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience developing microservices architectures
• Experience introducing and establishing new engineering tools or practices within a team
• Leadership or management experience in a development team or department
• Knowledge of information security best practices
• Hands-on experience with development on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Experience developing B2B SaaS products
• Experience leading development teams or managing projects
• Experience building AI- or machine learning-powered services

 

Portrait of a Person

Ideal Candidate

• Passionate about solving meaningful problems that help prevent pollution, health issues, and industrial accidents
• Eager to bring new ideas into the world and impact society at scale
• Curious and proactive about learning beyond your specialty
• Self-motivated and able to work independently in a remote environment
• Interested in helping a Japanese startup expand globally

 

Salary

¥8,000,000 – ¥15,000,000 annually