Product Manager, Payments

Remote OK - Anywhere in Japan
Full-time
January 10, 2024

We accept, manage and settle money between countries, currencies and various local payment methods. Many companies, from small merchants up to global corporate giants, expect KOMOJU to work reliably, quickly, safely and without effort on a large scale. We handle many, many millions of transactions each year. Japan and Korea are our main theatres of operations now and we plan to expand into Europe later this year, followed by South East Asia and South America shortly.

At KOMOJU, we consider every major component of our product to be a product of its own. The product manager leads, owns and manages this product as if it’s a business on its own. KOMOJU products are constantly evolving, improving and expanding, so an agile and open mindset is key.

Requirements

We’re looking for someone who has:

Ideally 5+ years product management experience in fast growing teams
Prior experience in payments, fintech, crypto, e-commerce, etc.
Proven ability to take a product from the earliest conception to successful market adoption
Strong design and user sensibilities - ability to view product from a user’s vantage point and is motivated by the chance to improve the lives of customers
Experience working on technical B2B and B2C products
Technical aptitude. Comfortable with the internal workings of online services and opinionated about APIs
Ability to inspire engineering teams to elevate their product ambitions and has collaborated closely on architecture and product decisions alike
Strong written and verbal communication skills with a talent for precise articulations of customer problems

You may be a fit if:

You’re a creative product thinker who loves collaborating across the company with engineering, risk operations, analytics, marketing, design and sale
You are eager to roll up your sleeves and build out a new product idea with a fast-moving motivated team
You have experience managing technical software products and navigating difficult technical tradeoffs
You do whatever it takes to make your product and team successful whether that means writing a QA plan or hunting down the root cause of a user’s frustration
You can turn incomplete, conflicting, or ambiguous inputs into solid action plans
Beyond just shipping new products, you obsess about continuous product improvement and can optimize for shipping a portfolio of small, medium and large releases
You have experience building or working on technical platforms that enable concurrent development of features by teams located around the world.

Benefits

Competitive salary, based on experience and capabilities
Financial support for working remote (lump-sum payment)
Additional one week of summer vacation in addition to your regular ones
Paid birthday holiday included
Free language lessons available (Japanese)

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About KOMOJU

KOMOJU (by Degica) is the leading cross-border payment gateway for Japan.

We power payments for companies like video game distribution platform Steam and the popular mobile app TikTok.

Today we help thousands of merchants by providing them with the payment infrastructure they need, through developer-friendly API’s to integrations on popular platforms like Shopify and Wix; we help our merchants grow in all markets they are expanding.

When it comes to engineering, we believe in having a flat, inclusive culture and constantly improving by continuing to evaluate ourselves. We also prize individuality and believe that each member brings their own unique value to the team.

Our development processes are always updating as the company grows, and we have an engineering culture that largely organizes itself and each engineer has a lot of ownership in their own projects. This culture allows engineers to showcase their strengths while continuing to grow.

KOMOJU's policies during COVID-19 are as follows:

During COVID-19 all of their members are working from home 100% of the time (previously they allowed up to one day a week).
Their current plan is to continue their full remote policy even after COVID-19 is no longer a concern.
They’re able to accept applications from overseas, but you may need to work abroad until it’s possible to move to Japan.

Japanese Language Policy
With around half of their total members (and around 75% of engineers) coming from outside Japan, KOMOJU generally uses English for written communication (e.g. Slack, Github). Verbal communication is also primarily in English.

However, quite a few people working there can speak both English and Japanese fluently so Japanese may be spoken at times during meetings, especially when they involve teams other than engineering.

Overall, the language spoken depends on the team. The dev team uses mostly English, but their HR team (for example) speaks primarily Japanese.
Visa Sponsorship
KOMOJU sponsors visas for candidates living outside of Japan. They’re still hiring from abroad, but due to travel restrictions related to COVID-19 new employees from abroad may need to start working on a contract basis. KOMOJU will switch you over to a full-time employee contract and sponsor your visa once it’s safe to come to Japan again.

KOMOJU also helps out with relocation (searching for apartments etc.) but they don’t have a formal policy for this. The support offered depends on each individual case. They do always pay for flight tickets to Japan in the case that someone moves from abroad however.
Paid Leave
KOMOJU has a very generous vacation policy.

Like most companies in Japan, their basic PTO package starts with 10 days of normal paid time off during an employee’s first year, followed by increases in subsequent years in accordance with Japanese labor law.

KOMOJU also offers 5 extra vacation days that can be used during the summer months, and another 5 days of year-end holidays.

They also have birthday leave, which means members can get an extra day off each year on their birthday. So that’s a total of 21 vacation days per year in addition to Japanese public holidays. They also offer maternity and paternity leave.
Benefits
💻 New tech gear

👩‍🎓 Skill development support

💛 Support for attending conferences

🧡 Seminar participation support

📕 Book purchases

👶 Parental Leave

👩‍🏫 Language Learning Support

💜 Social security / insurance benefits included

🏥 Healthcare insurance

💚 Pension insurance

🚃 Commuter allowance

👍 Motorized sitting / standing desks when working from our office
Engineer Interview Process
Engineering Jobs

KOMOJU’s interview process skips the high-pressure whiteboard interviews in favor of a coding challenge that’s closer to what engineers would actually work on day-to-day.

Here’s the basic interview flow:
- First interview: Meeting with two KOMOJU engineers to discuss about something you’ve built and see if you’re a good cultural fit
- Second interview: Technical challenge to test your real-world development skills
- Third interview: Meeting with a senior leader in the company
Remote Work
KOMOJU allows full remote work from anywhere in the world! The only stipulation is that your work hours must have some overlap with the JST time zone.

Even once COVID-19 is no longer a concern, KOMOJU intends to continue their full remote policy.

And if you do relocate to Japan, there's no need to live near their Tokyo office — you can work from anywhere in Japan.
Work style
KOMOJU has an office in the Kichijoji area of Tokyo, but they’ve switched to working fully remotely due to COVID-19. A typical work day at KOMOJU begins at around 10:00AM for most people. Some teams begin with a stand-up meeting where they quickly share their tasks for the day before focusing on work for the rest of the day.

One unique aspect of KOMOJU’s work style is their code review process. Since they have a flat hierarchy and a relatively small team, they have a system where reviewers are selected randomly. Their engineers also take care of operations and handle errors or technical customer queries as a team via Slack.

A typical stopping time for engineers at KOMOJU is at around 7:00PM, and they have very little overtime so engineers normally won’t be online past this time. They also make it a point to avoid unnecessary meetings and prefer to have ad-hoc discussions with relevant members only.
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