Rakuten - Associate Software Engineer, application via RippleMatch

Rakuten, Inc. is the largest e-commerce company in Japan, and third largest e-commerce marketplace worldwide. We seek to empower merchants to deliver Omotenashi, a hospitality mindset, which helps sellers create lasting relationships with customers. Along with the global marketplaces, Rakuten supports an ever expanding list of acquisitions and strategic investments in disruptive industries and growing markets. 

At Rakuten, we offer competitive salaries, benefits, annual bonuses, a stocked kitchen (including catered lunch daily), and a dynamic office environment. We love investing in our people and when it comes down to it, we think our entire team is pretty awesome. As a technology focused company, we understand the importance of an energizing atmosphere that promotes collaboration and innovation. 

BDD (Big Data Department) is a global team, with offices in Tokyo, Paris and Boston, focusing on deploying large scale search and recommendations technologies to Rakuten Business Units world-wide. We operate with open source technologies and analyze data to innovate and build new cutting-edge machine learning/statistical modelling platform and applications.  

We are looking for a talented and highly motivated Associate Software Engineer to come join the Boston team in developing large scale solutions built on our big data platform and help design and implement our next generation graph database software. Be part of a growing team working on cutting edge technology and discover innovative solutions to industry-wide problems.  

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Be part of the development team implementing our core graph engine to design the new state of the art in efficiency and scalability. 
• Define, implement, and test new APIs and services. 
• Take ownership of internal components and help direct future development. 
• Build new algorithms and models to improve our big data solutions. 
• Create business solutions through a combination of software development and data science. 
• Collaborate with project managers, developers and business units to develop products and services. 
• Participate in managing and maintaining applications and services. 
• Work with a global team across several locations and time zones. 

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities) 

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

• Knowledge and solid understanding of algorithms, data structures and networking. 
• Ability to work independently and with the team to produce thoroughly tested and bug-free code that will power services exposed to hundreds of millions of users around the world.  
• Experience with data streaming and processing platforms such as Kafka and Hadoop. 
• Experience with SQL, NoSQL, and graph database technologies (e.g. MySQL, Cassandra, Neo4j) a plus. 
• Knowledge of search engine technologies such as Lucene, Solr and ElasticSearch a plus. 
• Experience with integrating C code with Python or Java a plus. 
• Ability and interest in working close to the computer architecture, knowledge of x86-64 microarchitecture and memory hierarchy a plus. 
• Effective communication and collaboration skills. 
• Experience with Linux administration and scripting languages.  

QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS 

• B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or other quantitative science fields. 
• One to two years of software development experience preferred
• Strong software development ability in C, C++, Python, or Java. 

RAKUTEN SHUGI PRINCIPLES 

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success. 

• Always improve, always advance. Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen. 
• Be passionately professional. Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best. 
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika. Use the Rakuten Cycle to success in unknown territory. 
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to see their customers smile. 
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team. 

#ZR