VPoE Candidate (Kurashiru) - Tech & Organization Leadership

▼Job Description ◼︎ Kurashiru Today ------------------------------- Kurashiru Inc. operates "Kurashiru," a recipe video platform with over 44 million cumulative downloads. As one of Japan's largest recipe services, boasting 12 million social media followers and approximately 50,000 recipe videos, we have supported the daily lives of many users in "cooking." However, our engagement with users is limited to a small part of their lives through recipes. By venturing into "shopping," which precedes and follows cooking and occupies a more central role in daily life, we aim to evolve into a service that covers the entire spectrum of life infrastructure. With this vision, we launched "ReciChalle" in 2022. ReciChalle is a savings and shopping support app where users can earn points by posting receipts. Since its release, it has achieved over 10 million cumulative downloads and surpassed 3 million monthly active users. It has reached Product-Market Fit with a rare growth rate for a C-to-C service and is now entering the 10 to 100 scaling phase. ◼︎ ReciChalle and the Future We Aim For ------------------------------- ReciChalle's mission extends beyond being a savings app for consumers. By leveraging the purchasing data collected through receipt submissions for marketing transformation, we are challenging the "reconstruction of industry" within the 156 trillion yen purchasing market. Japan's annual consumer spending is approximately 156 trillion yen. About 90% of this is offline (in-store) purchases, an area where digitalization and data utilization are significantly lagging. - In the manufacturer and retail industries, frequent price reductions due to insufficient demand forecasting are common. - For annual promotional expenses of approximately 15 trillion yen, the accuracy of effect measurement and targeting is insufficient. ReciChalle is a rare means of accumulating actual purchase data through receipts. We utilize this to support the advancement of data utilization in offline purchasing. The vast amount of OCR data from daily receipt submissions, demographic information, and recipe viewing history form the foundation supporting Kurashiru's next business step. From a "recipe video company" to a "company that drives promotional and purchasing data," and further to a "company that replaces Japan's supply chain with AI-Native solutions." This is the future Kurashiru is striving for. Representative Horie's Note: Changing the Nature of Industry with AI and Delivering Happiness to 8 Billion Lives https://note.com/yusukehorie/n/ned652c8c02b0 ◼︎ VPoE Mission and Role ------------------------------- As Kurashiru enters a significant investment year, we aim to evolve our engineering organization to support business growth from both technical and organizational perspectives. In this position, you will be expected to define the direction of technical investment and organizational management for the entire engineering organization, including backend and mobile, as a member of the management team. You will work alongside the EMs of each section to drive company-wide optimal actions. Kurashiru's VPoE is defined as an individual who simultaneously fulfills the following three roles: ▽ 1. Driving the organization with a focus on management - Lead an engineering organization of approximately 25 engineers (backend section ~15 people, mobile section ~10 people) with a management focus (60-70% management / 30-40% development). - This position demonstrates leadership across technology, organization, and business by conducting one-on-one meetings and building consensus with EMs from each section. - A background biased towards either backend or mobile is acceptable. You will collaborate with EMs and tech leads from sections you have less experience in to drive initiatives. ▽ 2. Making management decisions - Your mission is to formulate and make decisions on the direction of the engineering organization in alignment with business strategy, engaging in discussions with the same perspective as the management team, business leaders, and CPO. - Define and drive the development roadmap, hiring plan, budget allocation, and organizational design as part of the management agenda. - This is the layer responsible for final decision-making in technical domains, based on Kurashiru's decision-making principle of "the most knowledgeable person decides." ▽ 3. Institutionalizing AI-Driven Development as an organizational standard - Kurashiru has established AI-Driven Development as a company-wide policy, including providing a monthly AI allowance of 100,000 yen to all engineers. - We are seeking a leader who will standardize and institutionalize the individual AI utilization efforts across each section, transforming the AI-driven development flow into a competitive advantage for the company. ◼︎ Responsibilities ------------------------------- There are three areas of responsibility listed below. The specific tasks assigned will be discussed and refined through interviews based on your experience and aspirations. ▽ A. Technical Strategy & Company-wide Architecture - Formulation of technical strategy and architectural direction across backend and mobile. - Company-wide promotion of platform engineering and development productivity infrastructure. - Prioritization and promotion of technical debt repayment and quality investment across the company. - Consensus building on bounding context (Bounded Context / service division, module division) strategy. ▽ B. Organizational Management & EM Development - Development of EMs and tech leads, design and operation of evaluation systems and career ladders. - Formulation and execution of cross-section hiring strategies and personnel plans (leading interviews, selection process design, and recruitment PR as the hiring manager). - Refinement of development culture, such as full-cycle development, weekly sprints, and Working Out Loud, as organizational standards. - Systematization of AI-driven development as an organizational standard (horizontal expansion of individual best practices, design of guardrails). ▽ C. Connection with Management & Business - Collaboration with business leaders, CPO, and management to formulate medium-term plans that align business strategy with technical investment. - Design the balance between feature development, technical debt resolution, and technical investment as a management agenda, and translate it into a development roadmap. - Responsibility for engineering budget, investment decisions, and ROI monitoring. - Participation as the technical lead for new product and business development, starting with 1st Party Data x AI. ◼︎ Reference Information ------------------------------- - Company Presentation: https://speakerdeck.com/delyinc/for-engineers - "ReciChalle by Kurashiru" Official Website: https://about.rewards.kurashiru.com/ - Kurashiru Retail Network Press Release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000398.000019382.html - Business Partnership with Mitsubishi Shokuhin Press Release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000335.000019382.html - Kurashiru "AI First System" Introduction Press Release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000397.000019382.html - Growing Products with Strong Teams: The Current Status and Future of an EM After 5 Years: https://note.com/kurashiru_jp/n/n6c38826ea6d5 ▼Required Skills/Experience - Experience in development and operation of web applications or mobile applications. - Management experience at the VPoE, CTO, or executive technical officer level. - Experience in directly communicating with management and business leaders to form strategic consensus and drive technical strategy and organizational policies. ▼Preferred Skills/Experience - Experience in organizational design and scaling for C-to-C services in the scaling phase. - Experience in organizational implementation of development process improvements using AI tools. ▼Ideal Candidate Profile - Individuals interested in services that become life infrastructure used by those around them. - Those passionate about driving business through technology. - Individuals who want to demonstrate ownership by formulating strategy from the highest level and seeing it through to completion. - Those who can adapt to the speed of change inherent in an investment phase, where policies can shift rapidly. - Individuals who want to lead the organization with a focus on management while maintaining a hands-on approach to technology. ▼Job Appeal ◯ Supporting the daily lives of tens of millions as life infrastructure With Kurashiru's 44 million cumulative downloads and ReciChalle's 10 million cumulative downloads, you can experience the impact of your decisions and organizational management on the daily lives of tens of millions through services that support core life experiences like "cooking" and "shopping." ◯ Social impact of digitizing analog industries Approximately 90% of Japan's annual consumer spending of 156 trillion yen is offline purchases, an area where digitalization and data utilization are lagging. ReciChalle and AI Supply Chain OS are services with significant social impact, aiming to revolutionize the business processes of manufacturers and retailers with AI-Native solutions. ◯ Japan's largest-scale 1st Party Data x AI Our 1st party dataset, which combines recipe viewing, receipt purchases, location information, and in-app behavior, is rare in Japan. As a core position, you will design and implement how to leverage this data while maintaining a modern data infrastructure using Snowflake/dbt. ◯ Phase of completing AI-Driven Development as an organizational standard Individual initiatives such as a monthly 100,000 yen AI allowance and company-wide AI-driven development promotion are underway, with advanced AI utilization. As VPoE, you will have the opportunity to systematize these as standards for the entire engineering organization and create a pioneering example of transforming the AI-driven development flow into a company competitive advantage. ◯ Discretion and decision-making speed as a member of management This position offers a close proximity to management (CPO, Head of Development), allowing you to directly drive engineering decisions as part of the management agenda. The decision-making principle is "the most knowledgeable person decides," and a culture of weekly sprints, daily morning meetings, and Working Out Loud supports a rapid cycle. ◯ Building a career in technology management As the head of the entire engineering organization, spanning backend and mobile, this position offers the opportunity to gain comprehensive experience in technical investment, organizational management, and management decision-making. It comes with the discretion and responsibility necessary for a career path towards CTO or technical executive roles. ▼Development Environment ▽ Backend - Languages/Frameworks: Ruby 3.0, Rails 7, Node.js, React - Middleware: MySQL, Redis - Configuration Management: Terraform - Monitoring: Amazon CloudWatch, New Relic, Sentry, Opsgenie - Infrastructure: AWS (ECS, RDS, ElastiCache, DynamoDB, SQS, S3, Lambda) - Analytics Platform: Snowflake, dbt, BigQuery, Athena - CI/CD: GitHub Actions, CodePipeline, CodeBuild ▽ iOS - Language: Swift - Architecture: MVVM / MVI - Core: SwiftUI / Swift Concurrency - CI/CD: XcodeCloud / GitHub Actions - Library Management: Swift Package Manager / Cocoapods - Tools: SwiftLint / SwiftGen / Sourcery / Mockolo / Mint / fastlane ▽ Android - Language: Kotlin - Architecture: MVI / MVVM - CI/CD: AWS CodeBuild / GitHub Actions / DeployGate - Libraries: Jetpack Compose / ViewBinding / Kotlin Coroutines / RxJava / Dagger Hilt / Toothpick / OkHttp / Retrofit / Moshi / Room / Kotest / Detekt ▽ Promotion of AI-Driven Development Kurashiru advocates for AI-Driven Development as a company-wide policy and provides an environment where developers can maximize their use of AI. - A monthly AI allowance of 100,000 yen is provided to all developers, allowing them to freely combine and use AI tools suited to their tasks. - AI utilization is expanding across the entire company, including business roles, and the organization is actively exploring and implementing AI-based business processes. - A key theme for the VPoE is to standardize AI-driven development across the entire engineering organization, moving beyond individual initiatives. ▽ Equipment and Office Environment - MacBook Pro M4MAX (64GB RAM, 1TB storage), updated to the latest model every two years. - Keyboard layout: JIS/US selectable, Screen: 16-inch/14-inch selectable. - Office environment: 27-inch 4K monitor. ▼Employment Type Full-time employee (No fixed term) ▼Probationary Period Yes: 3 months (extendable up to a total of 6 months) *Initial annual paid leave: 3 days upon joining, with an additional 7 days upon completion of the probationary period, totaling 10 days. There are no changes to the terms and conditions. ▼Salary Monthly salary: ¥961,539 - ¥1,923,077 ▼Annual Salary Lower Limit (JPY Million) 15 ▼Annual Salary Upper Limit (JPY Million) 30 ▼Salary Example Estimated annual salary: ¥15,000,000 - ¥30,000,000 (including twice-yearly bonuses) *Estimated annual salary is based on achieving standard performance throughout the year. ▼Work Location 23F, msb Tamachi Station Tower N, 3-1-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023 ▼Working Hours Flextime system - Core time: 10:00 - 16:00 - Flexible time: 5:00 - 10:00, 16:00 - 22:00 Standard working hours: 8 hours per day *Monthly prescribed working hours: Approximately 160 hours ▼Break Time 60 minutes (can be taken at any time) ▼Overtime Work Average overtime hours: 12 hours/month for development roles, 17 hours/month company-wide average. ▼Holidays, Paid Leave, Special Leave - Complete two-day weekend (Saturday and Sunday), national holidays. - Year-end and New Year holidays. - Annual paid leave (3 days granted upon joining + 7 days upon completion of the probationary period). - Congratulatory and condolence leave. - Childcare leave. - Menstrual leave (once per month). - Marriage leave (up to 5 consecutive days can be taken upon the employee's marriage). ▼Benefits 【Childcare and Parental Support System】 - Maternity and childcare leave. - Childcare leave (both male and female employees have taken leave, with a 100% return-to-work rate). - Promoting paternity leave. - Childcare leave (5 days per year, can be taken in hourly units). - Childbirth attendance leave (up to 2 consecutive days can be taken). - Reduced working hours system (for childcare, nursing care, etc.). - Babysitter discount tickets. 【Internal Systems】 - Side jobs allowed (with permission based on guidelines). - Support for purchasing peripheral equipment for engineers/designers (up to ¥50,000). - Employee housing rental service implemented. 【Internal Culture & Communication Systems】 - VISION DAY (a day to reflect on the company's vision and move forward each half-year). - Year-End Party (company-wide event held at the end of the year). - Awards System (recognizing value embodiment at the bi-annual company-wide general meeting). - Pit-in Meeting (short company-wide morning meeting every Monday). - All Hands Meeting (monthly meeting by business unit). - Thanks Message System (a culture of sending gratitude via dedicated cards). - Referral hiring incentive system. - Welcome lunch. - Club activities. ▼Allowances - AI Allowance: ¥100,000 per month (for all developers). - Transportation allowance: Up to ¥40,000 per month. - Fixed overtime allowance: ¥250,112 - (for 45 hours of overtime work). ▼Insurance Enrollment All social insurances available (Employment, Industrial Accident, Health (Kanto ITS), Employees' Pension). ▼Measures to Prevent Passive Smoking at the Workplace No smoking indoors. ▼Education, Skill Development, and Career Advancement - Tech blog operation (https://zenn.dev/p/dely_jp). - Encouragement and support for presenting at conferences. - Culture of internal study sessions and knowledge sharing. - AI workshops (conducted internally as part of job efficiency and reskilling support). ▼Health - Regular health check-ups. - Vaccination support. - Industrial physician consultations. - Life Bridge System (allows remote work for a limited period during family emergencies or health concerns). - Wevox implementation (visualizing organizational motivation and engagement). - Care room available. ▼Interview and Selection Process Casual meeting → 1st Interview → 2nd Interview → Final Interview