Senior Product Engineer (Partner Product Development Department)

Overview

You will be assigned to the Partner Product Development Department of Business Segment SMB Domain, responsible for overseeing the product line for partner professionals (accounting firms and labor and social security attorney offices) that make up a significant part of Money Forward Business Segment's business. The Partner Product Development Department aims to continuously solve various challenges faced by users in Japanese accounting firms. By advancing this project, we aim to improve the productivity of our crucial partners, increase the value they generate, and achieve mutual growth with Money Forward.

Responsibilities and Duties

The Cloud Partner Group sets forth the product vision of "advancing the advisory experience for professionals," recognizing the significant role professionals play in the growth of small and medium-sized businesses. However, a considerable amount of time is often spent on paper-based management tasks such as receipt management and various application form preparations, limiting resources for advisory services.

Since our inception, we have aimed to promote the digital transformation of SMEs through our back-office SaaS series, Money Forward Cloud, giving priority to our professional partners. As of 2023, our cloud accounting service is the No.1 choice among accounting firms, capturing a 45% market share.

Our current goal is to extend new value to professionals, allowing them to direct more focus toward supporting the business growth of SMEs. We employ Scrum development without dividing team roles between backend and frontend, welcoming engineers with a strong product mindset, who are full-stack or specialized in either backend or frontend but eager to transition to full-stack roles.

English will become the primary language for development by fiscal year 2025, although some initial phases are still conducted in Japanese. Conversational Japanese is a plus.

Required Skills and Experience

Product & Communication Mindset:

• Strong Product Mindset: 
  • Proven experience working in an environment where you actively contributed to product discovery, user workflow definition, and feature validation.
  • Understand user workflows within the target domain and discuss specification validity
  • Identify potential design risks by considering domain assumptions and constraints
• Stakeholder Communication: 
  • Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical business partners and vice versa.
• Decision Leadership: 
  • Ability to organize objectives, non-objectives, constraints, and risks to drive decision-making forward

Technical Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of web application development experience, with a full-stack mindset (willing to work across the stack irrespective of the specific language).
• Strong professional experience with our core stack (or a proven ability to adapt to it quickly):
  • Frontend: React, Next.js, GraphQL and REST
  • Backend: Java / Server-side Kotlin and Spring Boot, or Ruby on Rails
• Experience designing, deploying, and operating cloud infrastructure.
• AI-Augmented Delivery:
  • Utilize generative AI/coding assistance tools to accelerate development while ensuring quality, safety, and maintainability
• Capable of relocating to Japan and commuting to the Tokyo office at least twice a week.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Conversational level in Japanese.
• Experience with backend development using Ruby on Rails and RDBMS.
• Experience in system architecture design.
• Experience in microservice development.
• Experience working in a Scrum team.
• Experience practicing DevOps.
• Experience in container-based development.
• Proficiency in test-driven development.
• Experience in AI development and/or experience in using AI tools to improve development processes.
  • Money Forward recently announced our AI Strategy roadmap which focuses on improving AI-driven operational efficiencies, as well as integrating AI agents into our products to deliver better value to our users. (More information here)

Language Requirements

• Japanese Language Requirements
  • No Japanese Language Requirement but willingness to learn
• English Language Requirements
  • TOEIC score of 700 or above, plus the ability to handle meetings and text communication in English soon after joining.
    (Note: If you have other qualifications or experiences demonstrating English proficiency, such as EIKEN Pre-1, EIKEN 2nd Grade (CSE score 1950+), TOEFL iBT 60+, IELTS 5.0+, or Cambridge FCE.), feel free to discuss with us) For those without a TOEIC 700+ equivalent score, they will be asked to take a designated test during the interview process (generally after the first interview).

Technology Stack

• Backend: Kotlin, GraphQL, Ruby on Rails
• Frontend: React.js, Next.js, TypeScript
• Middleware: MySQL, Kafka, Debezium
• Infrastructure: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform
• CI/CD: CircleCI, GitHub Actions, Argo CD
• Monitoring: Datadog, Rollbar
• Task Management: JIRA

Tools Used

• Communication: Slack, Zoom

Work Environment

At Money Forward, we provide an environment where we can create world-class services together, and we are looking forward to welcoming you.

• Provided PC Specs: We provide PCs equipped with the latest CPUs (MacOS or Windows). Custom-made PCs tailored to business requirements and replacements with the latest OS are also possible.
• Systems to Enhance the Development Environment: Peripheral devices necessary for work (such as displays, mice, keyboards) can be purchased as office supplies. Generally, you can choose from standard products (catalog), and if conditions are met, you can apply for non-standard products as well.
• Money Forward Library: We have a library system where you can freely borrow books, ranging from technical books to management books. Desired books can be purchased at the company's expense.
• Referral Driven: We cover the cost of recruitment meals. There is a referral reward system.
• Conference Participation Support: The company partially covers participation in domestic and international conferences, such as RubyKaigi and Google I/O.