Senior Backend Engineer (Content Provider Engineering)

Tokyo
Partial Remote
Full-time
September 23, 2024

SmartNews is a global leader in redefining information and news discovery, committed to providing users with accurate, timely information and supporting quality journalism. We combine the power of our unique machine-learning technology with the expertise of our first-rate editorial team to bring news that matters to millions of users from our over 3,000 global publishing partners.

Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, Japan, SmartNews has offices in Tokyo, San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, and Singapore.

The Team

Own, build, and maintain our content provider-facing platforms, enabling SmartNews to continue providing top content from leading news publishers, retail brands, and more. Our relationships with our content providers are key to our success, and we are dedicated to delivering a top-quality experience throughout their journey with us—from content ingestion to analytics, reporting, and payments.

The Mission

In this role, your mission will be to act as the bridge between our many content partners and our products. You will lead design and implementation of key platforms providing smooth content ingestion, management and resilient data pipelines to measure content performance and support revenue share as part of our Media Prosper Program. Your primary focus will be on developing features and building the backend infrastructure for our content provider platforms. However, you will also contribute to frontend development for external partner-facing websites and contribute across the entire news pipeline from ingestion to delivery as opportunities arise, ensuring we can deliver great contents to our users at every stage of the product.

Role and Responsibilities:

Own the development and maintenance of a key partner platform in our premium content domain
Design, build, test, deploy, maintain, and improve backend systems that support content ingestion and management at scale
Flexibly develop across backend and web frontend as needed to enhance and improve platform functionality.
Participate in system design, code reviews, and on-call rotation to maintain high-quality standards for code and ensure the reliability of mission-critical systems.
Collaborate closely with product and business stakeholders to prioritize, plan, and successfully deliver new products to our customers.

Requirements

Minimum requirements

3+ years of backend software development experience; 1+ year in web frontend or full-stack development.
Proficient in Java/Kotlin programming languages.
Hands-on experience in designing, building, testing, and maintaining large-scale backend systems, with expertise in CI/CD practices and microservices architecture using Docker/Kubernetes.
Exceptional communication skills for both technical and non-technical audiences.
Business level communication in English and Japanese.

Nice to have experiences/skills

1 year or more in a tech lead role
Knowledge of and experience using AWS cloud resources

Working condition

Office Location: Tokyo

Benefits

Annual health check covered by the company
Visa sponsorship and overseas relocation support available for eligible candidates

APPLY NOW ➜Japanese Required ⚠️

About スマートニュース

スマートニュース株式会社は「世界中の良質な情報を必要な人に送り届ける」ことをミッションとし、独自開発のウェブ解析技術を基盤に、アメリカと日本を中心に世界5000万ダウンロードを超える「SmartNews」を運用しています。また、創業者の1人がエンジニア出身であり、ITを重視するテクノロジー企業です。

スマートニュースの開発チームは非常にダイバシティ豊かです。東京とサンフランシスコ、パロアルト、上海、北京に開発オフィスがあり、世界トップレベルのエンジニアが集まっています「One Product, One Team」の哲学に基づき、日米で異なるタイムゾーンや言語、物理的環境でありながらも、活動のコードベースは1つ、そしてチームも1つでグローバルプロダクト開発体制をつくっています。英語もしくは日本語どちらかが流暢に話せれば応募可能なポジションもあり、優秀なグローバルメンバーと国際的な環境で働きたい日本人にとっても、すばらしい環境です。日本語、英語の学習サポートもあります。

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.