Staff Data Engineer

Rakuten Group serves over 100 million members in Japan and nearly 1 billion globally, offering more than 70 services across diverse domains such as e-commerce, fintech, telecommunications, media, and advertising.
The Analytics & Data Engineering Department (ADED) drives the group's data and AI initiatives, delivering advanced data infrastructure and products that power Rakuten's digital ecosystem.
Our team operates globally across Japan, Singapore, and India, providing scalable data solutions that enable data-driven decision-making and innovation.

The Data Lakehouse Section provides the foundation for Rakuten's Digital Twin strategy - enabling seamless, real-time understanding of customers across services.
We manage one of the world's largest first-party datasets, developing and operating products like Customer DNA (CDNA) and Deep CDNA, which unify data across business units.
As a Staff Data Engineer, you will drive technical strategy and lead cross-functional initiatives to evolve our global data platform.

As a Staff Data Engineer, you will operate at a broader scope beyond individual projects, influencing system architecture, technical direction, and cross-team collaboration.
You will work closely with global stakeholders across Japan, Singapore, and India to drive large-scale data initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

Define and drive the technical vision and architecture for data platforms across multiple teams and regions.

Lead cross-team and cross-regional initiatives, ensuring alignment and scalability of data solutions.

Make high-impact architecture and design decisions for large-scale data systems.

Establish and enforce best practices and standards in data engineering, including reliability, scalability, and observability.

Collaborate with engineering leaders, product managers, and stakeholders to shape data strategy and roadmap.

Mentor senior engineers and act as a technical leader and role model across the organization.

Drive improvements in data governance, security, and platform reliability at an organizational level.

Contribute to critical implementations when needed, while maintaining a focus on system-level impact.

Mandatory Qualifications

8+ years of experience building and scaling big data platforms in production environments.

Strong experience in system architecture design for large-scale distributed data systems.

Proven track record of leading cross-team or cross-regional technical initiatives.

Expertise in Python and modern data engineering ecosystems (e.g., PySpark, Pandas).

Deep hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, etc.).

Strong understanding of data modeling, distributed systems, and performance optimization.

Experience with cloud-native architectures, CI/CD, and Infrastructure-as-Code.

Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence decisions across teams.

Rakuten is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications regardless of sex, marital status, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religious belief or age.