Senior Backend Engineer, Ranking Team (Machine Learning)

Tokyo
Partial Remote
Full-time
September 21, 2022

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: an engineer who can develop a highly-scalable, world-class backend platform for Ads/News Ranking working closely with our Machine Learning Engineers.

About our Engineering Culture

Our global teams of engineers come from a variety of professional backgrounds, from large, well-established companies to small ventures. We believe that employees with diverse skill sets and life experience make for strong, cohesive teams.

Visit the People page on our careers site to read interviews of our engineering leaders!

Responsibilities

Drive and execute engineering development of robust and scalable backend systems to enable state-of-the-art news Ranking to millions of users  
Oversee the maintenance and the stability of world-class core news Ranking system components  
Lead, mentor, coach junior software engineers and/or projects
Collaborate closely with global cross functional teams (Product Managers, Editors, Machine Learning engineers) to develop backend system for new news-related product features  
Work closely with software engineers to optimize backend system of news articles, pages, channels, search, and other news-related-features to provide high quality user experience and increase user engagement 
Work closely with News Delivery and AI Foundation teams to develop system that deliver personalized news 
Proactive, innovative, creative problem solving for system improvements which will result in user impact

Requirements

Minimum Requirements

3~5+ years of experience in building distributed, highly scalable systems supporting millions of users, including design, coding, and evaluation/testing (Prefer Java, Kotlin, Scala. Open to Golang, C++, Rust)
Experience leading, mentoring, coaching software engineers and/or projects
Strong educational background in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical fields
Experience of developing machine learning algorithm and data engineering (data pipeline, data platform, etc)
Business-level ability in English or Japanese

Preferred Qualifications

Experience developing ranking/recommendation/search related systems
Failure analysis and performance tuning in JVM operation

Familiarity with tech stack such as AWS, Spring-Boot, Elasticsearch, Kafka, Flink, Github, MySQL, Hive, Hadoop, Spark, Docker, Kubernetes, and/or TensorFlow
Experience in internet, web, ads, and/or technology industries
Passion and interest towards solving world problems such as digital divide, filter bubbles, echo chambers, group polarization, etc.
Business Japanese

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.

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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.

Japanese Language Policy
We do not require Japanese language ability in the working environment. We have a language support program if employees want to learn Japanese.
Visa Sponsorship
We support candidates to get a working visa from the start to the end (for JP office joiners).
Paid Leave
Our holidays shall include Saturdays, Sundays, national holidays, and other days designated by the Company.

Annual paid holidays
- 4-10 days of paid holiday will be granted depending on the month in which you join the Company.
- From the second year and onwards, paid holidays will be granted according to the number of years of your employment on April 1st of each year. The number of days granted shall be set forth in the Work Rules.
Other leaves
- Summer holidays
- Year-end and year-beginning holidays
- Special leave for congratulation or condolence (marriage or immediate family death)
- Sick/Injured Child Care Leave
- Family nursing care leave
- Maternity and paternity leave
Benefits
☕️ ChikyuCoffee - Delicious coffee provided by our Barista every day

🍹 Free soft drinks

🌽 SmartKitchen - Healthy organic lunch on a daily basis for free at our cafeteria

👩‍🎓 Foreign language development support

💜 Various social insurance benefits included

🏥 Health insurance

📓 Free book rent from our library collections

🌎 Translation/interpretation support (EN<>JP)
Remote Work
We accept work from home policy during natural disasters and emergency situations. Our company’s working policy during the pandemic follows the government’s recommendations.
Work style
Our engineering and product teams follow the discretionary labor system to better collaborate with members in the US and China.
Diversity
We support diversity in various ways and those are not simply reflected in the quantitative goals.

We have employees with 18 different nationalities. Groups of small gatherings with similar interests are actively communicating across divisions, departments, and regions. We have monthly Global All Hands to share important notes from each region and be aligned globally.

All employees in SmartNews have different personal and professional backgrounds and experiences.
Parents and Family
We are supporting our employees in various ways to help them manage their work better with family care.

We have 10 annual paid leaves (for a child) for employees with children until they enter highschool.

Working from home is encouraged when their family needs care. Employees can freely invite their family to the Smart Kitchen (our corporate kitchen where free lunches are served).

During the working from home period because of the pandemic, employees with small children autonomously held some online sessions for their children such as reading fairy tales and mutual online babysittings.