[QA Engineer] Lead Quality Assurance for New Shopping Experiences on "Kauche" Discovery E-commerce (Over 6M Downloads) (Updated 6/29)Translated from Japanese

▼Job Description ■Company Information We operate "Kauche," a discovery-based social e-commerce app, with the vision of "Creating a New Form of Living Sphere." We are creating a space where shopping becomes an emotionally engaging experience beyond mere purchasing, through serendipitous encounters with sale items and participatory features like reviews and quests. As a "Daily Discount Marche," we provide value as a new sales channel for sellers, offering an enjoyable experience for buyers. We aim to revolutionize experiences and industries by circulating information, goods, and emotions. ■Product Features Kauche is a discovery-based social e-commerce app. Discovery-based e-commerce is the opposite of traditional search-based e-commerce, where you "search for what you want and buy it." Instead, it offers an experience where you "discover what you want while browsing and then buy it." We are creating a space where shopping becomes an emotionally engaging experience beyond mere purchasing, through serendipitous encounters with sale items and participatory features like reviews and quests. In March 2026, we surpassed 6 million cumulative downloads, with users spread evenly across the country. A notable characteristic is that a large portion of our users are women aged 40-50 who have had little to no prior experience with e-commerce. Our strengths include abundant elements for daily enjoyment, such as the crop-growing game "Kauche Farm" and the posting feature "Minna no Post." Many users engage with the app frequently, averaging 38 minutes per day and visiting more than 20 days a month, exhibiting behaviors entirely different from typical e-commerce users. ■The World Kauche Aims to Create Kauche's mission is "Bringing Fun to Everyday Life," and we aim to "Create a New Form of Living Sphere." Our goal is to reintroduce human richness, such as discovery, serendipity, and a moderate level of liveliness, into the e-commerce shopping experience, which tends to focus on search and optimization. We envision a place where people can naturally gather, feel at ease with familiar faces, and want to linger, much like a train station or a shopping street. We are shaping this by combining social, entertainment, and commerce. Since our business transformation in 2023, we have achieved a 30x increase in GMV, a 252x increase in gross profit, and a 68x increase in DAU in two and a half years. We continuously update conventional wisdom with an operational model that is not dependent on headcount. Our goal is to become a living infrastructure where 100 million people can enjoy 100 million different kinds of fun. We aim for a corporate value of 1 trillion yen with 100 employees and will carve out the living sphere that should become the main stage of retail in 10 years. ■Background of the Recruitment Since our business transformation in 2023, we have achieved rapid growth, with a 30x increase in GMV, a 252x increase in gross profit, and a 68x increase in DAU in two and a half years. We have expanded to include many users, such as women aged 40-50 who previously did not use e-commerce much, and have now surpassed 6 million downloads. Users spend an average of 38 minutes per day and visit more than 20 days a month, generating engagement comparable to major e-commerce malls. We are currently in the midst of significantly updating our systems and experiences to further accelerate growth and deliver value to more customers. Kauche operates under the basic policy of "achieving significant business value without being labor-intensive," and we have created a small product development team. Currently, we are accelerating product releases by improving development productivity. However, our QA system has not kept pace with this speed, and quality assurance is becoming a bottleneck. Currently, we have a team of two contract employees. We are looking for a leader who will join as a full-time employee, lead the QA organization, and embody the culture where fast delivery of features and value is possible precisely because we enhance quality, with the goal of expanding the team and maximizing customer value. ■Job Responsibilities Kauche is a complex application that intertwines e-commerce, gamification, and social elements. You will be involved in the entire process from requirements definition to release, and will be responsible for improving quality through engineering. Specifically, you will be entrusted with the following tasks: - Comprehensive QA, including manual testing: The entire process from test planning to execution and review. - Quality strategy formulation and execution: Defining and ensuring the ideal quality to enhance product value. - Promotion of test automation: Automating and improving efficiency of regression tests using Autify. - Establishment of AI-Native QA processes: Practicing the efficient creation of test items and understanding of specifications using AI. - Promotion of Shift-Left: Participating in projects from the specification and design stages, and preventing defects by pointing out inconsistencies and omissions from a QA perspective. ■Specific Technical Challenges and Project Examples - Assurance of game logic such as Kauche Farm Quality assurance for features involving complex state transitions, such as crop growth speed and social integration. - Handling large-scale traffic Ensuring reliability to support a highly engaged user base with an average daily stay of over 30 minutes. - AI-driven QA improvement Exploring how to optimize QA processes in a development organization where AI generates 90% of the code. ▼Required Skills/Experience - 2+ years of QA experience with mobile apps or web systems. - Ability to drive software development from a QA perspective with a strong sense of ownership. ▼Preferred Skills/Experience - Practical experience in software development or development experience in private projects. - QA leadership experience (ability to manage test execution, test progress, etc.). - QA efficiency improvement experience (introduction of automation mechanisms, etc.), and experience in selecting and operating various testing tools. ▼Desired Candidate Profile - Those who can share our vision: Empathy for "Bringing Fun to Everyday Life" and "Creating a New Form of Living Sphere." Empathy for "Love Change," "Create Tailwinds," "Connect Through Results," and "Cherish Your Passions." Those who feel there is potential in the e-commerce experience. - Those with a spirit of challenge: Those who want to take on challenges in a rapidly changing environment from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, 10 to 100, and 100 to 1000. Those who want to challenge themselves in a unique, massive market exceeding 10 trillion yen. Those who want to undertake significant challenges centered around software. ▼Job Appeal ■The "People" and "Technical Culture" You'll Work With - Industry-leading engineers gather. Both full-time and contract members include many senior members in their 30s who have experience as Tech Leads, EMs, and CTOs at mega-ventures and tech startups. The two contract members also hold JSTQB certifications, enabling high-level discussions. - "We can build faster by improving quality." Speed and quality are not trade-offs. We emphasize testing, CI/CD infrastructure, and continuous refactoring, diligently practicing the "haste makes waste" principle. Example: Migration from Firestore to Cloud Spanner. - A culture of developing in close proximity to the business and customers. We work collaboratively with Product Managers and Designers, syncing deeply on business metrics, team KPIs, and response strategies during development. We emphasize quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback (user experience, inquiries, social media posts, reviews, etc.), developing while constantly engaging with the customer's context. After release, we analyze quantitative and qualitative changes to inform the next initiatives. This rapid development cycle based on toC feedback is a key characteristic. ■Expectations for the First 3 Months (Onboarding) From the beginning, you will not be left to figure things out on your own. We will support your ramp-up as a team with clear milestones. 1st Month: Catch up on existing product specifications and QA flows. Understand the release cycle through QA for small-scale initiatives. 2nd Month: Take ownership of test design and execution from specification review for a specific feature development. 3rd Month: Participate in technical decision-making, such as promoting automation and proposing QA process improvements. ▼Development Environment We thoroughly utilize modern technology selections and Google Cloud's fully managed services. Languages: Go (100%) Infrastructure: Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Cloud Spanner, Pub/Sub, etc.) Communication: gRPC, Protocol Buffers CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Cloud Build Configuration Management: Terraform Monitoring: Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace Analytics Platform: BigQuery, Looker Studio QA Automation Tool: Autify AI/LLM Tools: Claude, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, etc. (Budget available for all employees) Others: GitHub, Slack, Notion, Figma Development Style: Agile Development (5-9 deployments per day, 12 feature releases per month) ▼Employment Type Full-time employee (No fixed term) ▼Probationary Period Yes (3 months) *No changes in treatment or conditions during the probationary period. ▼Salary Monthly salary: ¥450,000 - ¥1,000,000 ▼Annual Salary Lower Limit (¥10,000s) 540 ▼Annual Salary Upper Limit (¥10,000s) 1200 ▼Work Location Asia Building 9F, 1-12-16 Jinnan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0041 Frequency of Office Visits: Hybrid (3 days per week) *Scope of Change: Head office and all branches and sales offices nationwide. ▼Working Hours Flextime system (Applicable to all full-time positions) *Standard working hours: 8 hours per day *Flexible time: 6:00 - 22:00 *Core time: 11:00 - 15:00 ▼Break Time 1 hour, flexible to take ▼Overtime Work Yes ▼Holidays, Paid Leave, Special Leave - Complete two-day weekend system (National holidays, New Year's holidays, etc.) - Annual paid leave - Special leave (5 days upon joining) - "F-Leave" (Leave for women's health issues/check-ups, once per month) - Congratulatory and Condolence Leave - Maternity and Childcare Leave - Childcare and Nursing Care Leave ▼Benefits - Commuting allowance (up to ¥30,000 per month) - Stock options that do not expire after leaving the company - Referral bonus - Club activity system (partial subsidy for activity costs) - Book and seminar subsidy system - KAUpos allowance (peer bonus system) - Subsidy for welcome and farewell party expenses ▼Insurance Enrollment Health Insurance / Employees' Pension Insurance / Long-term Care Insurance / Employment Insurance / Workers' Accident Compensation Insurance ▼Measures to Prevent Passive Smoking at the Workplace No smoking indoors in principle (smoking area available) ▼Interview/Selection Process To eliminate mismatches, we will carefully assess both technical skills and cultural fit. Casual Interview (Let's chat first!) First Interview (Technical/Cultural: EM/CTO / 60-90 minutes) Assignment Selection (Technical: EM + On-site Engineer / MAX 90 minutes) We will share an assignment for you to work on at home, followed by a discussion. Final Interview (On-site: CEO/COO / MAX 90 minutes) Reference checks may be conducted between the final interview and the assignment selection. ▼Other Scope of Change in Job Duties: All duties related to our business.