NEWSLETTER

Zeals

Remote

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Senior MLOps Engineer

Remote OK - Anywhere in Japan
Full-time
December 17, 2024

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

As a Senior MLOps Engineer, you will be at the forefront of deploying, optimizing, and monitoring LLMs in production environments. Your role will involve building and maintaining scalable pipelines, ensuring low-latency inference, and implementing best practices in monitoring and observability. You will also work with state-of-the-art tools like Hugging Face and MLFlow to fine-tune models and integrate them into robust AI solutions.

Key Responsibilities

Model Deployment & Management

Develop and maintain scalable pipelines for deploying LLMs, focusing on efficient, low-latency inference.
Utilize tools like Hugging Face and MLFlow for seamless model integration and version control.
Automate deployment processes, including model validation and continuous integration.

Monitoring & Observability:

Implement comprehensive monitoring frameworks to track performance and reliability of models in production.
Use advanced observability tools to proactively detect and address performance issues.
Deploy alerting systems to ensure rapid response to anomalies in model behavior.

Infrastructure Optimization:

Architect and optimize cloud and on-premise infrastructure to support large-scale LLM operations.
Collaborate with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP to optimize costs and performance.
Work with backend engineers to ensure smooth integration of AI models into conversational platforms.

Collaboration & Documentation:

Partner with AI engineers and data scientists to align on project objectives and deployment strategies.
Document MLOps processes, best practices, and tools to maintain operational excellence.
Provide training and support to team members on MLOps methodologies and tools.

What You’ll Need

Experience

5+ years of experience in MLOps, DevOps, or related fields, with a focus on deploying and managing LLMs or other large-scale machine learning models.
Proven experience with tools like Hugging Face, MLFlow, and containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and infrastructure as code (Terraform).
Hands-on experience in reducing inference latency and optimizing AI infrastructure.

Technical Skills:

Proficiency in Python, with experience in ML libraries such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and related frameworks.
Expertise in CI/CD pipelines, version control (Git), and orchestration tools.
Familiarity with Generative AI, prompt engineering, and deploying models at scale.

Soft Skills:

Excellent problem-solving skills with the ability to tackle complex challenges independently.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.
A proactive mindset with a focus on continuous learning and staying updated with industry trends.

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 our ability to attract great talents–who could potentially be your colleague!

Our Tech Stack

Backend Languages: Go, Python, Elixir
Frontend Languages: HTML, CSS, JavaScript (TypeScript, React.js, Recoil, Zod, Tanstack, etc)
Mobile Languages: None
Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, GCP Pub/Sub, Kubernetes, MongoDB, MySQL, Postgres, BigQuery, Elasticsearch, Qdrant
Configuration management tool: Terraform
CI/CD: Github Actions, ArgoCD, CircleCI
Monitoring: Grafana, GCP Cloud Monitoring, GCP Logging, GCP Cloud Trace, Opsgenie
Data: BigQuery, Parquet, Spark, Scala, Python, dbt
Knowledge Tools: Confluence
Other: GitHub / Slack / Jira
Process: Scrum

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 to make your experience better!

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 the right candidates. You can expect full visa support from our professional HR team.
Flexible working: Highly flexible, remote-first international organization

For Japanese residence: Work from anywhere, interim work from overseas, full flex time

Housing allowance (within 1.5KM away from office)
Club activity allowance
Shuffle Lunch allowance (Cross department lunch)
Zeals Bar (bi-monthly free flow beer party)

APPLY NOW ➜

About Zeals

The #1 Japanese Conversational Commerce Solution.

ZEALS is not another chatbot. They are the #1 Japanese conversational commerce solution. 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.

Phenomenal Growth
Having nearly doubled revenue YOY the last few years, targeting a 290B TAM, ZEALS benefits from a strong product market fit, clear ROI tied to their solution, and high customer retention rates. With over 480+ enterprise companies currently using their product globally, including well-known brands like L’Oreal and Nissan, ZEALS is well positioned to capture market share and drive exponential growth both in the Japan and US market as their next target region. Investors have taken notice – they raised nearly $40M and were backed by Salesforce Ventures in May of 2022, and they are planning to use these funds to continue their aggressive investment in both technology and people.

ZEALS is Revolutionizing Hospitality on the Internet
ZEALS enables consumers to purchase and reserve products via a well-designed conversational experience. The goal is simple: to “revolutionize hospitality on the Internet,” unlocking digital customer service experiences that used to be limited to physical stores previously. By allowing customers to converse about their purchase before making it, purchase rates are increased by about 5 times, driving a 9.6% average conversion rate across 1.5 million monthly active users. ZEALS’ service is widely adopted across verticals including ecommerce/DTC, travel, cosmetics, fitness and fintech.

Won LinkedIn Top Startups Award Twice in a Row
ZEALS has received the LinkedIn Top Startups award twice in a row. They believe this is a testament to their growth and ability to attract great talents–who could potentially be your colleagues!

Opportunities to Socialize
ZEALS provide a club activity allowance, a “shuffle lunch” allowance for having cross-departmental lunches, and ZEALS Bar, free flowing beer party.

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)
- 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 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.