Technical Program Manager

Tokyo
Remote OK
Full-time
October 25, 2021

Job Description

SmartNews is a leading news aggregation app for mobile devices. It analyzes millions of articles to deliver the most engaging information of a high quality, in near-real time fashion, to millions of users around the world. To support our vision, we are building and improving platform functions. Such development poses lots of challenges regarding program management.

You will join as a Technical Program Manager to lead technically complex programs in SmartNews to success.

Responsibilities

Lead technically complex programs to success
Define success metrics and roadmaps from high-level business goals and strategies
Identify areas of influence, and drive technical decision-making and alignment of cross-functional teams
Carry out all required communication to make programs successful
Manage execution of development including development, testing, etc
Perform data-driven analysis and investigate existing system behavior
Document and report on programs and project statuses, roadmap plans and progress, new program and project proposals, follow up on project and program plans
Prepare, execute and analyze results of A/B tests
Prepare and maintain technical-level KPIs, OKRs, and SLIs/SLOs/SLAs

Requirements

SQL, Spark, Hive, or similar data querying skills
B.S. degree in Computer Science or experience in software application development
Excellent written and oral communication skills
Track record of understanding product requirements and translating those requirements into actual technical specifications
Track record of program or project management that involves multiple engineering and product teams
Track record of technical program management or project delivery experience as an engineer
Ability to understand technical architecture design for basic systems
Business-level English

Preferred Experiences

Track record of experience in engineering in large-scale machine learning, data engineering, distributed systems, or similar areas
Business-level Japanese
Experiences defining technical specifications for micro-services

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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.