Software Engineer, Android

Tokyo
Partial Remote
Full-time
May 13, 2022

【Mission】

SmartNews is a technology company driven by our mission of delivering the world's quality information to those who need it. Our leading mobile news app has tens of millions of monthly active users in Japan and the US. Our goal is to grow SmartNews into a top global product, delivering quality information that supports millions worldwide.

In order to accomplish this, we are looking for mobile developers who are capable of developing state-of-the-art Android mobile applications that are smart, engaging, and user-friendly for our users while contributing to our aggressive business growth.

【Culture】

Our engineers come from a variety of backgrounds from large, well-established companies to small ventures. We believe that employees with diverse sets of skills working together make for strong, cohesive teams.

Visit our People page to see interviews of our engineering leaders!

【Android Engineer Responsibilities】

As an Android Engineer, you will:

Lead the design, execution, and performance optimization of an Android application used by tens of millions of users
Closely collaborate with global cross-functional teams (product managers, designers, data scientists, backend engineers, etc.) to build new mobile product features
Optimize mobile platform with the latest Android and Kotlin technology to improve user experience and mobile engineering productivity
Analyze and optimize UI and backend application code for efficiency and performance
Rapid prototype development to visualize impactful product for the user and the business
Proactive, innovative, creative technical problem solving with a focus on metrics

-Technologies We Use-

Languages: Java, Kotlin
Libraries: Firebase, OKHTTP, ExoPlayer, Lottie, Coil, Timber, Jackson, detekt
Tools: GitHub, Slack, CirecleCI
Issue Management: JIRA
Document Management: Notion

-Teams and Their Functions-

Ads Mobile

Contribute to business growth by developing advertisement features with reliable and efficient code

Engagement Backend

Support the development of features for US edition consumers, building many prototypes that will help differentiate and give the users an engaging experience while using the SmartNews app

JP & US Growth Mobile

Provide new value that cannot be found anywhere else with modern mobile technology and encourage people to start using the SmartNews app

Mobile Foundation

Provide a positive engineering experience for application software engineers by building a scalable mobile foundation

News Mobile

Drive user engagement by defining how users access and interact with their news across regions

Requirements

【Qualifications】

3-5+ years of experience with Android application development
Experience with coding in both Kotlin and Java
Experience building maintainable and testable code bases, including API design, and unit testing techniques
Experience with multithreading programming and mobile memory management
Business level communication in English

【Preferred Qualifications】

Experience developing Android applications from start to finish
Experience with other programming languages
Experience with mobile CI/CD, ideally on a customized cloud setup
Experience with Android performance tools
Experience with applying unified architectures in a large-scale mobile project
Familiar with design patterns and architecture design (e.g UML)
Experience working with cross functional teams

Benefits

【Benefits and Perks】

Support programs for self-improvement and career development (language learning, etc.)
SmartKitchen - Free healthy lunch served daily (Tokyo Office)
ChikyuCoffee - Delicious coffee provided by our Barista every day (Tokyo Office)
Transportation coverage (maximum 50,000 yen)
Various social insurance benefits included

APPLY NOW ➜

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.

SmartNews's policies during COVID-19 are as follows:

All interviews are being conducted remotely
Employees are working remotely following the government’s instructions
They've given everyone some monetary incentive to support working from home

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.