Perks of Being Part of the Team
Prae san
( Application Engineer )
Joined in 2017. Application Engineer. I have been using Rakuten's services since I was a research student. After hearing from professors and students that Rakuten had an open culture, I became interested in working at Rakuten.
A team that supports learning and challenges
Rakuten supports me in my learning and providing me opportunities to try new things in my career. Here, you are encouraged to share your ideas directly to the managers and we have a great team that supports each other.
You also can learn how to improve ownership of your service. By meeting wonderful and cool people from all over the world and learning about each other's cultures and working styles, we also learn to cooperate smoothly.
Pursuing the best technology
I am working on improving the real-time processing system to process huge amounts of data in our current advertising service. As a result, there are many new technologies that need to be investigated and tested to find the best fit for our system. At the same time, we are also leading the BI tool development for Rakuten market ads, which influences the generation of each ad to the initial data warehouse and delivery.
Start with a small development. I want to be a system designer and analyst
The goal of my career is to be a system designer and analyst. Since joining the team I’ve had the chance to test myself with new challenges such as system design, project management, system expansion planning, etc.
I had many opportunities to develop a system from scratch and grow while gaining experience. I was initially assigned to the development of a small module in the main system called the discount function. Since then, the scope of my work has expanded to the design of monitoring for the main system. My current project is a fraud detection system and IABI platform to contribute to a whole new system, which requires the cooperation of teams from different departments.
These projects, especially the last two, have contributed to my growth in the SA domain, as well as helping me to gain the required soft skills such as communication, system planning, development approaches and resource management. Both my manager and my department are very supportive and allow me to take internal and external training courses that help me expand my knowledge and skill set.
Jun san ( Assistant Manager )
Joined in 2019. Assistant Manager.
The services we created are out in the world
Before joining Rakuten Group, I was an engineer for contract development. I joined Rakuten because I wanted to work in an environment where I could create services. Currently I’m engaged in the development of advertising for Rakuten Ichiba.
The fact that the services that we created are out in the world and that the scale of the services continues to grow everyday while helping both stores and users motivates me very much.
The biggest perk is not running out of things to do
My work has a very wide scope. In development, I match requirements with the business side. I also assign tasks to development members, adjust schedules and adjust specifications with related services, and do development myself. In addition, we often develop in cooperation with members not only in Japan but also overseas. One of the tasks is to operate and monitor after the service is in, extract data for the next business project, and conduct surveys.
In addition, if an issue is found, we are in charge of proposing improvement plans for the product, consult with the team and superiors, and then proceed by ourselves. When I talk to my boss about the kinds of projects I want to work on, I have an environment that gives me opportunities and support. I think it's an environment where you can find what you want to do.
Growing as an engineer in an environment that handles huge amounts of data
We are engaged in advertising service products that have continued to grow every year since our launch.
As services grow, so does the volume of data. Traffic is high at big events like Rakuten Super Sale and we are constantly looking ahead to improve stability, performance and accuracy while monitoring data and identifying and verifying issues. Being able to handle huge amounts of data at a company that provides as many services as Rakuten makes it possible for engineers to work in an environment where they can grow steadily.
In addition, recently, the number of employees from outside of Japan has increased in the team, and there are also many young members with high technical skills and high awareness of technology. This makes it necessary for me to absorb new things rather than maintaining the status quo, which stimulates me every day. I feel that we are growing together.
Oogi san ( Producer )
Joined in 2012. From Mongolia.
Producer. He was transferred from the business side to development.
I can raise my hand and expand my career potential.
I raised my hand and experienced three department changes every three to four years. Mine might be a rare case, but by experiencing different environments every few years, it makes you feel like you changed jobs and your career has expanded even though you are in the same company.
At first, I was in charge of planning large-scale campaigns such as a Father's Day special feature and a Rakuten Eagles victory sale in the organization department of Rakuten Ichiba, which is a pillar of the Rakuten Group. There, I was able to experience Rakuten's core culture, working as one team to achieve higher goals amid the pressure for maintaining quality.
After that, I was in charge of launching a service for our cashback site in Japan from our US business. There were many members from the United States, including the business manager, and the environment was like a Silicon Valley startup.
And now I belong to the advertising product development team of Rakuten Ichiba at GATD. The Japanese team consists of members from eight countries and is a very global and diverse department that works with stakeholders in Singapore and India.
”At home” cooperation culture
The advertising products I am currently in charge of are connected to many systems, and to work on them I need to collaborate with many stakeholders. Also, partly because I was transferred from the business side to the tech side, I couldn't understand the technical background of many projects which were moving at high speed. I was supposed to be in a position to take the lead as a service manager, but the biggest challenge I had was to keep up with everything.
However, here in GATD there is a flat atmosphere where it’s very easy to speak with managers and team members, which allowed me to get used to my new responsibilities real fast. Furthermore, since GATD provides services by integrating multiple systems, it was very helpful for onboarding to have a culture in which the all the team members support each other.
Data driven culture and decision making
Rakuten has accumulated a huge amount of data and the decision-making is fundamentally based on the data. We have an infrastructure and support system that can read and analyze data and which influences big decisions as well as service improvements.
Personally, since I started working at Rakuten, I have become fascinated by data and tried to contribute to the business by utilizing it in new ways. The first department I belonged to used data to discover issues from the analysis of the plans in charge, and the second department used it to directly contribute to business performance such as marketing campaigns and fraud control.
Currently, I am in charge of a data-based service called search-based advertising. At the same time, my team is proposing improvements to the environment in which service personnel can further utilize data and are incorporating them into the promotion of BI tools.
We will continue to contribute to the development of services and decision-making based on data and AI.