NLP Engineer

Remote OK - Worldwide
Full-time
April 28, 2023

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…

We have recently secured a Series E funding totaling $33.8M led by JIC Venture Growth Investments and Salesforce Ventures. We are ready to start our mission and expand our business beyond the Japanese market - LINK.

We’re looking for a small group of elite teams to build the foundation of our global expansion.

Your Typical Day With Us

Design, develop, and implement NLP models for a variety of applications, including language understanding, text generation, and text classification
Collaborate with the R&D team to identify NLP-related blockers and improve the overall user experience
Conduct research and stay up-to-date with the latest NLP techniques and technologies
Optimize and improve our current NLP models
Develop and maintain a scalable and robust NLP infrastructure

What You’ll Need

Bachelor's or Master's degree in a quantitative field such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or Machine Learning
3+ years of experience in NLP and Machine Learning
Experience developing NLP models for production-level environments
Strong programming skills in Python–in addition to extensive experience with various NLP libraries (such as NLTK, SpaCy, and fastai)
Hands-on experience with Deep Learning frameworks (Tensorflow, PyTorch, HuggingFace)

What Makes You Stand Out

Ph.D. in a quantitative field such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or Machine Learning
Experience with conversational agents, as well as with Japanese NLP tools
Familiarity with Natural Language Generation (NLG) processes and techniques
Hands-on experience with deploying NLP models into AWS or GCP and integrating them into company-level systems
Hands-on experience in MLOps frameworks, storage management systems, and testing environments

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.
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-weekly free-flow beer party)

APPLY NOW ➜

About ZEALS

Build AI that Brings Japanese Omotenashi to the World

ZEALS is an AI company building intelligent products inspired by the Japanese concept of Omotenashi—anticipating people's needs and delivering exceptional experiences. What began as Japan's leading conversational commerce platform has evolved into an AI-native company developing products across autonomous AI agents and robotics.

Today, ZEALS operates three core businesses:

ZEALS AI Engagement, helping enterprise companies deliver personalized customer experiences through AI.
Omakase.ai, a platform for building autonomous AI agents capable of understanding, communicating, and taking action across voice and chat.
Omakase Robotics, developing a robot-agnostic AI operating system that enables robots to work naturally alongside people in real-world environments.

Together, these businesses share a single mission: creating AI that understands people, acts autonomously, and brings the spirit of Japanese hospitality to both digital and physical experiences.

From Market Leader to AI Pioneer

ZEALS established itself as the market leader in conversational commerce in Japan, working with hundreds of enterprise customers across industries including retail, beauty, travel, finance, and automotive.

Building on years of experience designing AI-powered customer interactions, the company has expanded into generative AI and embodied AI. Omakase.ai quickly gained international recognition after launching as the #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, with thousands of AI agents created by users within its first months. Meanwhile, Omakase Robotics is applying the same AI capabilities to the physical world, developing software that enables robots to perform meaningful work in human environments.

With teams spanning AI, machine learning, cloud infrastructure, robotics, and product engineering, ZEALS continues to invest aggressively in technologies that shape the future of intelligent systems.

Building the Future of AI

Rather than treating AI as a feature, ZEALS builds products where AI is the core technology. Engineers work across a wide range of challenging technical domains, including:

Autonomous AI agents
Voice AI and multimodal interaction
Large Language Models (LLMs)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Distributed cloud infrastructure
Robotics software
Computer vision
Real-time systems

Small, highly autonomous teams own products end-to-end, from research and prototyping to deployment and continuous iteration. Engineers collaborate closely with product managers, designers, and AI researchers to rapidly ship new capabilities and solve real-world customer problems.

A Place to Grow

ZEALS has built a culture around ownership, rapid learning, and continuous experimentation. Employees are encouraged to challenge assumptions, move quickly, and take responsibility for delivering meaningful outcomes. The company also supports collaboration beyond day-to-day work through cross-functional lunches, club activities, social events, and opportunities to connect across teams.

Japanese Language Policy
At ZEALS, the product and technology team members primarily speak English (dev-related discussions happen in English on Github or Slack). There might be occasional discussions in Japanese, but most Slack messages are in English (or both languages).

As for meetings, all dev-related discussions take place in English. Given the above, Japanese skills are not required for most positions in the Product & Technology departments. However, one unique aspect of ZEALS’ culture is the desire to increase teamwork and engage with each other, which is why many Japanese members are working on their English skills while many non-Japanese members also work to improve their Japanese skills.

In order to build a truly global team, ZEALS has many multilingual members that proactively support the rest of the team to ensure smooth communications.

Even outside of the Product & Technology departments, all important company-wide announcements are made in both English and Japanese. For example, hiring announcements, new product launches etc. are generally announced in both Japanese and English.

Also, simultaneous interpretation for presentations at large meetings and events is provided to ensure that everyone gets the information they need.
Paid Leave
- All Japanese public holidays off
- 10 days of PTO (awarded 3 months after joining) in the first year
- 5 refreshment leave days per year
- Summer Holidays, Year-end Holidays, Childcare Leave, Congratulations/Bereavement Leave
Benefits
Here are some examples of the benefits which full-time employees can receive:

💻 Loaned Laptops

🇯🇵 Translation Support (EN<>JP)

👶 Shorter Work Hours for Employees Taking Care of Children

👶 Parental Leave

👕 Flexible Dress Code

💜 Social Security / Insurance Benefits Included

🏥 Healthcare Insurance, Periodic Health Checks

💚 Pension Insurance

🚃 Commuter Reimbursement
Remote Work
Although ZEALS requires you to either be in or relocate to Japan, once you’re here, you can choose whether you work from home or in the office.
- Full-time employees in Japan can work from home or come to the office. Transportation reimbursement to and from the office is available and people living close to the office can receive a housing allowance.
- If you’re not based in Japan yet, you can work from overseas while we help you obtain a Japanese working visa.
- Work from your home country 2 months per year.
Work style
ZEALS is flexible when it comes to working hours. They have core time from 1:00pm to 3:00pm JST, but otherwise you’re free to set up your day however you want to meet the monthly working hour requirements.
Values

FROM ZEAL

< Passion >
Good things come from giving it your all

BET ON PARADOX

< Unorthodox >
Never settle for the established norm

UNITED WILL

< Team >
Teamwork is the heart of achievement

Office

The ZEALS office is in the heart of Tokyo, situated in Meguro, near Gajoen, a famous hotel known for hospitality. You can work from the office at a desk as well as use small booths or meeting rooms. You can hook your laptop to large screens and sit in Ergohuman chairs. Lounge areas and standing tables are also available. Everyone is free to choose the work style that works best for them, either full-remote or in the office.