Technical Program Manager, Backend and Infrastructure - US App

Introduction

Our Mission

Mercari has sought to expand overseas from the outset. This led us to enter the US market in 2014, the year after Mercari’s founding. The US is home to people of diverse backgrounds, of many different races, nationalities, and religions. Laws and culture also differ from state to state. Growing our US service requires grappling with complex problems and issues. This is exactly why we think of the US as a microcosm for our future global expansion. It’s an extremely important country for us, where we cannot afford to fail. While this makes it much more difficult than our Japan-side operations, our US business contributes greatly to achieving Mercari’s mission, and we will continue to face the challenges of the US market going forward.

Our Culture

To achieve our mission at Mercari, our organization and each of our employees share the same values and perspectives. Our individual guidelines for action are defined by our three values: Go Bold, All for One, and Be a Pro. Our organization is also shaped by our four foundations: Sustainability, Diversity & Inclusion, Trust & Openness, and Well-being for Performance. Regardless of how big Mercari gets, the culture will remain essential to achieving our mission and something we want to preserve throughout our organization.

We invite you to read the “Mercari Culture Doc,” which summarizes the behaviors and mindset shared by Mercari and its employees. We continue to build an environment where all of our members of diverse backgrounds are accepted and recognized, and where they can thrive while holding dear Mercari’s culture.

Position Overview

What You'll Do

• The Technical Program Manager (TPM) for Backend and Infrastructure plays a key role in executing high-impact initiatives as well as defining, running, and improving processes to increase the effectiveness of our engineering teams in the domains of Site Reliability Engineering, Security Infrastructure, Microservices Platform and Machine Learning Platform.
• The primary responsibilities of the Technical Program Manager are to organize, coordinate, communicate and help the team deliver on engineering-platform programs by working across teams to cascade higher-level goals into the next steps. TPMs work fluidly from the big picture to details so that the team can deliver complex cross-functional projects. You break through communication issues and effectively develop relationships with stakeholders of the organization.
  
• Your work will include but is not limited to
  • Scrum mastering platform and project teams
  • Help manage the Eng. Backlog for product-agnostic initiatives, ensuring that the scope, expectations, and outcomes are clear across engineering managers and stakeholders.
  • Project manage cross-functional initiatives working with engineering managers, tech leads, and engineers to define milestones, break down work, estimate efforts, drive the schedule, and launch. Track progress, resolve dependencies, evaluate risks and communicate status to upper management and project stakeholders. Engage and energize the project teams to achieve aggressive goals.
  • Track issues and proactively remove obstacles to drive momentum and progress. Identify communication gaps, manage issue escalations and provide support to teams balancing competing priorities. Drive results proactively.
  • Implement continuous improvements to the engineering organization and the program management process. Share program/project process frameworks, tools, and best practices that can be adopted throughout the organization. Improve platform development and delivery.

Unique Challenges

• You will work with a talented team based in Tokyo, and also collaborate with many teammates across the US. Working globally with a diverse team, we’re all-in to help people in the US buy and sell on Mercari, while getting ready for whatever comes next.
• You will help manage complex projects in a fast-paced engineering environment. You will evangelize best product development and agile practices across the organization and educate scrum masters for different teams.

Minimum Requirements

• Shared understanding and belief in Mercari Group mission and values　
• Minimum of 5 years of experience with Technical Program Management in web backend and infrastructure engineering teams and projects
• Solid technical aptitude and an ability to understand the end-to-end development life-cycle for distributed web software platforms, technical designs, cloud platforms, and overall engineering challenges and risks
• Experience in large and complex project management; Familiar with both Agile and Waterfall methodologies and able to apply them where best suited
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong organizational skills to manage multiple, competing priorities simultaneously, without losing sight of the highest priority items
• Strong technical, analytical, and quantitative skills with the ability to use data and metrics to back up recommendations and drive decisions
• Experience managing Jira and Confluence
• Experience working with distributed teams

Preferred Requirements

• Computer Science degree, or related field, or prior experience as a software engineer, preferably in backend and infrastructure domains
• Worked at a high paced, fast-growing tech startup
• Prior experience with program and portfolio management for traffic-heavy consumer applications and/or e-commerce platforms with distributed cloud infrastructure
• Prior experience with modern cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure, etc), tooling (Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, etc), and distributed system design
• Technical program management experience at an established company with a strong TPM team

Screening Criteria

• Please provide your resume in English
• We will conduct interviews in English
• Hiring Process Overview (subject to change)
• 1. Doc Screening
• 2. Interviews (3-4 rounds. There are some cases you will meet a few members in 1 round)
• 3. Background check
• 4. Offer
• 5. Hire
*Check here for more details

Language Requirements

• English: Proficient (CEFR - C1) required
• Japanese: Basic (CEFR - A2) optional
• Click here for more information about CEFR