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Are you looking
- To make meaningful changes at the fastest-growing tech company in Japan?
- For a fair, highly flexible, inclusive working environment where anyone, regardless of their background, can make an impact?
- To build the next bold idea in customer acquisition and revenue growth through conversational commerce technology
- For a place where things are not just fast - but they happen now?
We Are Zeals - “Designing conversations. Driving conversions.”
Zeals is not another chatbot. Our automated chat solution and conversational technology change how consumers purchase or act online. Zeals converts customers who appear "unengaged" to become "valuable" through designed chat on Messaging Apps. Using AI-powered, human-designed conversation flows across chat platforms, Zeals enables brands to build personalized, automated conversations with their consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their preferences while creating a delightful, seamless shopping experience. Our last 3 years have been phenomenal. We have captured the heart of many businesses in Japan, with over 480 enterprises relying on our chat commerce offering to boost their mobile business.
The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet” by unlocking digital customer service experiences that were limited to physical stores previously.
Just Getting Started…
With more than 480 enterprise companies worldwide already utilizing our product, we are perfectly poised to seize market share and fuel exponential growth in the US market, with an eye on global expansion. Investors have taken note of our potential, leading us to recently secure nearly $40 million in funding, backed by Salesforce Ventures.
Your Typical Day With Us
- Research, design, and build machine learning systems for recommendation systems
- Select appropriate algorithms and fine-tune models for optimal performance
- Evaluate model performance and suggest improvements where appropriate
- Integrate machine learning models into production
- Staying up-to-date with the latest machine learning technologies and methodologies
- Execute critical phases within the ML lifecycle
What You’ll Need
- 5+ years of work experience as a Machine Learning Engineer or Data Scientist with a minimum of 2 years in a leadership role.
- Solid Machine Learning background and deep understanding of certain domain of machine learning techniques, especially in recommendation systems
- Machine Learning skills:
- Familiarity with recommendation system and ranking algorithms
- Knowledge on A/B testing, statistical sampling, and hypothesis testing
- Development skills:
- Strong proficiency in Python.
- Familiarity with frameworks such as Tensorflow and Pytorch.
- Experience building and deploying machine learning models in a production environment
- Familiarity with model monitoring techniques and tools
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a quantitative field such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or Machine Learning
What Makes You Stand Out
- Ph.D. in a quantitative field such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or Machine Learning
- Hands-on working experience in MLOps frameworks
- Extensive knowledge, and ideally work experience, in recommendation systems, deep learning, and optimization methods and some experience in Natural Language Processing.
- Familiarity with:
- LLM
- generative AI(esp. RAG)
- customer experience and customer journey in e-commerce
- Experience in Big Data technologies
Don’t just take our word for it
Zeals has received the LinkedIn Top Startups award twice in a row. We believe this is a testament to our growth and ability to attract outstanding talents–who could potentially be your colleague!
Ready to roll up our sleeves
We obsess over bringing hospitality to everyone–be it our customers or you! You’re an individual with unique needs. So, while we can’t attract you with ping-pong tables or all-you-can-drink espresso bars, we promise you a once-in-a-lifetime experience and co-workers that you can brag about to your friends, family, or anyone you meet the next time you go out for a party! As an employer, we are ready to roll up our sleeves and change the status quo if it means improving your experience!
- Salary Range: competitive (performance review every 6 months)
- Performance review: twice a year
- Holidays: 10 days paid holidays during the first year, weekends off, national holidays, summer and winter break.
- Visa support: We sponsor visas for suitable candidates. You can expect full visa support from our professional HR team.
- Education support: Udemy, Frontend Masters
- Flexible working: Highly flexible, remote-first international organization
- For Japanese residents: Work from anywhere, interim work from overseas, full flex time
- Housing allowance (within 1.5KM away from the office)
Club activity allowance
- Shuffle Lunch allowance (Cross department lunch)
- Zeals Bar (bi-monthly free-flow beer party)
About Zeals
Zeals is transforming how companies do customer service using technology. Their top-rated chat commerce tools are designed to help clients provide digital "Omotenashi", Japan's highly-prized brand of hospitality.
Chat Commerce
The “Zeals" service lets users purchase and reserve products while talking with an AI chat bot. The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet”.
By integrating directly into chat apps like LINE and Facebook, Zeals unlocks digital customer service experiences that were limited to physical stores previously. By allowing customers to converse about their purchase before making it, they’ve been able to increase the purchase rate by about 5 times.
Their service has already been widely adopted in industries like travel, cosmetics and fintech. And they’ve already helped around 400 companies increase their sales.
In Japan, chatbots are still perceived as a tool for automating customer support, but more companies have been using them for marketing and commerce tasks as well (especially overseas).
China’s hyper-popular “Wechat” has over 8 million chatbots in use for marketing purposes, and there’s a “Conversational Commerce” movement happening in the US as well, with a growing number of services using chat bots for marketing. Zeals is the first solution in Japan to offer “purchase through conversation”.
Tackling a billion-dollar e-commerce trend
Zeals is the #1 Japanese conversational commerce solution, driving a 9.6% average conversion rate across over 1.5 million monthly active users. Using AI-powered, human-designed conversation flows in Instagram DMs and LINE chat, Zeals enables brands to build personalized, automated conversations with their consumers and develop a deeper understanding of their preferences while creating a delightful, seamless shopping experience.
The company has big plans: they’re hoping to expand to foreign markets, add voice features. The combination of their “chat commerce” tech and their communication designer expertise unlock a myriad of possibilities for future expansion. Their ultimate goal is to share Japan’s prized “Omotenashi” culture with the world and enable people to forge new connections with one another. They plan to keep developing new products in service to this vision.
Culture
To make this technological revolution necessary, Zeals is investing in people. They entrust their members with a high degree of autonomy and believe strongly in the need for a deep understanding of technology. The company raised 1.8 billion yen in funding in April 2021, and they’re planning to use these funds to continue their aggressive investment in both technology and people. They’re hoping to double the size of their engineering team in the next year.
Zeals has a highly unique culture among Japanese companies. They eschew the traditional hierarchical system in favor of a work style that emphasizes what people can do. They proactively give opportunities to those who are capable and motivated, and they’re not concerned with things like working hours or age.
They offer a flat hierarchy with a truly diverse group of members, including people coming from over 18 countries. Their work environment is flexible, allowing members to choose their own hours and work 100% remotely if they wish. They also have a culture that embraces new technologies, so they’ve gathered quite a few tech aficionados.
If this culture of a global, engineering-driven company resonates with you, then Zeals wants you to join their team!
Zeals' policies during COVID-19 are as follows:
- Overseas candidates are welcome to apply — and can even continue working from abroad!
- There are currently no meetings that require your physical presence (especially during COVID-19)
- For anyone who does relocate to Japan during COVID-19, Zeals will cover any costs for quarantining, testing etc.
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