Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

Remote OK - Worldwide
Full-time
May 31, 2023

About this position

You will build and improve infrastructure surrounding KOMOJU by making our platform highly reliable, efficient, and scalable. You will do this by automating all things infrastructure. This position will require a heavy amount of coding, you will be less of a sysadmin and more of a programmer, working on the infrastructure instead of the application code. In a typical day you can expect to do any of the following:

Identify and eliminate manual processes in managing and deploying infrastructure
Monitor the system for anomalies, and either eliminate them or automate alerts
Provide infrastructure context to the development team

Our applications are mainly hosted on AWS and built with Docker to provide a consistent execution environment between development and production, and deploys are done automatically on merging a PR, through Github Actions. To support this the team have created a deploy tool, barcelona, which they actively maintain.

Because our team works mostly in Ruby you will need to be familiar with the language. Prior knowledge is not a requirement for this position, as the company will support you in learning, but your first few weeks will be spent mostly becoming familiar with Ruby.

Responsibilities

Develop and automate tooling around infrastructure and monitoring
Work hand-in-hand with engineers to improve CI/CD workflows
Help improve and formalize disaster recovery at KOMOJU by shortening time to restore service in production
Help automate against latest vulnerabilities by services up date

Requirements

Experience writing code
Past experience developing tooling around cloud-based infrastructure
Strong knowledge working with Linux-based systems
Strong knowledge around networking and security

Nice to haves

Experience of the Ruby programming language
Experience working with AWS and CloudFormation
Previous experience developing web applications
Able to speak Japanese

Salary

8,000,000 - 11,000,000 yen / year

Includes (rough estimate of) profit share. Based on experience and skill level

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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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