About SmartNews
News can change the world, save lives, and bring us all closer together through empathy and understanding—but not if no one reads it. Out of the hundreds of millions of articles and posts, how do we deliver the information that matters the most?
Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, Japan, SmartNews is a leading global information and news discovery company dedicated to delivering quality information to the people who need it. We provide news that matters to millions of users thanks to our unique machine learning technology and relationships with over 3,000 global publisher partners. Our SmartNews app, available on iOS and Android, is already used in over 150 countries worldwide.
But we’re only just getting started, and that’s why we need someone like you.
If you’re looking for a company that’s small enough that your contributions have a visible impact on the company and product but large enough that you’re tackling interesting and challenging problems, then SmartNews is the place for you. Join us and wake up every day energized, knowing that you’re delivering the news people need.
Role and Responsibility
Empower the engineers in your team.
Define responsibilities and encourage ownership of deliverables.
Build a culture of entrepreneurship.
Grow the team's skill set, enable team members’ career growth.
Work with other teams and respond rapidly to varied initiatives.
Be responsible for the ad-delivery system’s foundation works.
Identify and improve foundational issues and create a roadmap of improvement.
Plan and fix the tech-debts, minimize the latency, and maximize the availability.
Do necessary refractory, improve the system release process and auto testing.
Co-work with other teams to make a modern globalized system.
Build a top class engineering team in JP, help the team be experts in the first-party ad system domain.
Requirements
Must-Have Requirements
6+ years of experience in hands on Software Engineering.
2+ years of Management or Tech Lead experience.
Experience working with highly scalable consumer facing product.
Nice to have
First party ads platform experience
Deep knowledge of cloud based systems
Benefits
Perks and Benefits at the SmartNews Tokyo Office
Support program for employee’s self-development and well-being
Healthy lunches are prepared on-site daily in our SmartKitchen, located in our West Office building. You can even see the cooks at work!
Need a pick-me-up? Stop by ChikyuCoffee, our in-house coffee shop located in both the East and West Office buildings, and get a cup of gourmet coffee, espresso-based beverage, or other seasonal drink!
SmartNews provides all healthcare and social insurance benefits required by Japanese labor law
Visa Sponsorship and Relocation Support
For candidates who meet eligibility requirements, SmartNews can sponsor visas.
To support a smooth transition for candidates who are moving to Japan from overseas, SmartNews partners with a travel service provider.
Empower the engineers in your team.
Define responsibilities and encourage ownership of deliverables.
Build a culture of entrepreneurship.
Grow the team's skill set, enable team members’ career growth.
Work with other teams and respond rapidly to varied initiatives.
Be responsible for the ad-delivery system’s foundation works.
Identify and improve foundational issues and create a roadmap of improvement.
Plan and fix the tech-debts, minimize the latency, and maximize the availability.
Do necessary refractory, improve the system release process and auto testing.
Co-work with other teams to make a modern globalized system.
Build a top class engineering team in JP, help the team be experts in the first-party ad system domain.
6+ years of experience in hands on Software Engineering.
2+ years of Management or Tech Lead experience.
Experience working with highly scalable consumer facing product.
First party ads platform experience
Deep knowledge of cloud based systems
Support program for employee’s self-development and well-being
Healthy lunches are prepared on-site daily in our SmartKitchen, located in our West Office building. You can even see the cooks at work!
Need a pick-me-up? Stop by ChikyuCoffee, our in-house coffee shop located in both the East and West Office buildings, and get a cup of gourmet coffee, espresso-based beverage, or other seasonal drink!
SmartNews provides all healthcare and social insurance benefits required by Japanese labor law
About SmartNews
Recently crowned Japan's latest tech unicorn, this company runs a wildly successful news service that’s powered by machine learning. It's an engineering-focused company (One of co-founders is an engineer) and they have offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Shanghai, Beijing that are apparently doing quite well too.
The mission of SmartNews is to discover and deliver quality stories to the world. Since its inception in 2012, the SmartNews app has been downloaded over 50 million downloads and maintained a monthly active user count of over 20 million.
In addition to being one of the most popular smartphone apps in Japan, SmartNews has worked hard on building their business in the US. They now have partnerships with over 300 major news publications in the US like CBS, Entertainment Weekly, Business Insider, National Geographic and more. They’ve had a great deal of success due to their ML-based sorting and recommendation systems.
SmartNews has a highly diverse development team with many world-class engineers and others working from their offices in Japan,China and the US. They maintain a very strict hiring bar for technical hires and an engineering-driven culture that makes them one of the strongest tech companies in Japan when it comes to technical skill level.
SmartNews is looking to hire the best people regardless of background, so they’re willing to hire people that don’t speak Japanese and (under normal circumstances) bring them to Japan from overseas if necessary. Everyone works together as one team regardless of location, and SmartNews provides everything their employees need to do their best work and maintains a Silicon Valley-inspired culture for engineers in Tokyo.
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