Technical Lead, AI/ML

Job Description:

Why should you choose us?

Rakuten Symphony is reimagining telecom, changing supply chain norms and disrupting outmoded thinking that threatens the industry’s pursuit of rapid innovation and growth. Based on proven modern infrastructure practices, its open interface platforms make it possible to launch and operate advanced mobile services in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional approaches, with no compromise to network quality or security. Rakuten Symphony has operations in Japan, the United States, Singapore, India, South Korea, Europe, and the Middle East Africa region. For more information, visit: https://symphony.rakuten.com.

Building on the technology Rakuten used to launch Japan’s newest mobile network, we are taking our mobile offering global.

To support our ambitions to provide an innovative cloud-native telco platform for our customers, Rakuten Symphony is looking to recruit and develop top talent from around the globe. We are looking for individuals to join our team across all functional areas of our business – from sales to engineering, support functions to product development.

Let’s build the future of mobile telecommunications together!

About Rakuten Group, Inc. (TSE: 4755) is a global leader in internet services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Founded in Tokyo in 1997 as an online marketplace, Rakuten has expanded to offer services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content and communications to 2 billion members around the world. The Rakuten Group has over 30,000 employees, and operations in 30 countries and regions. For more information visit https://global.rakuten.com/corp/.

Job Purpose:

Join the transformation toward autonomous telecom networks. You will design and deploy AI/ML-driven solutions that enable TM Forum Level 4+ closed-loop automation, helping networks detect issues, make decisions, and self-heal across RAN, Core, IPTX, and Cloud domains.

What You'll Own

• Define and execute the roadmap toward autonomous network operations.
• Build AI/ML models for anomaly detection, fault prediction, traffic optimization, QoS forecasting, and intent-based automation.
• Develop closed-loop systems for self-healing and self-optimizing networks.
• Build scalable data pipelines and manage the end-to-end MLOps lifecycle.
• Integrate solutions with ONAP, Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible, supported by CI/CD practices.

What’s Expected?

• Strong experience in AI/ML, including supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement, and deep learning.
• Hands-on expertise with TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, and NLP frameworks.
• Experience with Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Flink, and MLOps platforms such as MLflow or Kubeflow.
• Deep telecom knowledge, including RAN,4G/5G Core, Cloud, Transport Network.
• Experience with network automation, orchestration, and cloud-native technologies.

Preferred Qualification

• B. Tech in Electronics and Communication.
• Experience: 5-10+ years.

• Experience in and/or knowledge of telecom (5G SA/NSA/EPC/Cloud).

• Team spirit; strong communication skills to collaborate with various stakeholders.
• Good time-management skills, self-starter, able to work on their own.
• Intermediate Japanese Proficiency for both conversation and literacy (Good to have).

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.