Web Application Engineer, Rakuten Travel Experiences - Travel Development Department (TDD)

Job Description:

Business Overview

Rakuten Group operates a wide range of internet services globally, including e-commerce, travel, fintech, and mobile.
Rakuten Travel leads the travel domain within the group, pursuing its purpose of “Making People Happy with Travel” and continuously evolving as one of Japan’s leading online travel services.

Department Overview

Rakuten Travel is a leading online travel service in Japan, dedicated to “Making People Happy with Travel”.
Rakuten Travel: https://travel.rakuten.com/

Since our founding in 1996, we have consistently led the industry, challenging the norms and fostering innovation. With growing aspirations to expand beyond borders as a Global Innovation Company, we are not confined to Japan but continue to strive daily to become the world's premier travel reservation service.

As part of the Commerce & Marketing Company, the Travel Development Department is currently embarking on the following ambitious projects:
1. Globalization of Rakuten Travel to compete in global markets
2. Continuous improvement and strengthening Rakuten Travel’s presence in Japan to increase customer satisfaction

We are seeking like-minded individuals who resonate with our purpose. Join us at Rakuten Travel, propose new forms of travel to people around the world, and strive to be pioneers shaping the future of travel. Your passion and creativity will breathe new life into the travel industry, filled with infinite possibilities. We eagerly await your application and potentially invite you to take on challenges in a diverse environment in collaboration with new peers.

In this position, you will be responsible for the development and operation of services provided by "Rakuten Travel Experiences" https://experiences.travel.rakuten.co.jp/.

Expected to lead the travel industry, this role involves utilizing state-of-the-art technology to deliver services that address contemporary and varied travel demands.
Rakuten Travel is among the top online travel sites in Japan, requiring development skills to support its large-scale transaction processing. Particularly during the quarterly Rakuten Super Sale, you will be expected to handle over 150 reservations per second and manage search traffic exceeding 800 queries. The volume of this traffic is anticipated to increase in the future, making the development and operation of systems capable of handling high loads a critical responsibility.
Working at Rakuten Travel offers abundant opportunities for technical challenges and growth, leading to potential career advancement in an attractive position.

Position:

Why We Hire

As Rakuten Travel Experiences continues to grow, we need to keep delivering new features while ensuring stable operations, and continuously improving performance, automation, and quality.
Looking ahead to cross-product development across the travel domain (shared features and platforms), we are hiring engineers who can drive design, implementation, and operations across both frontend and backend.

Attractiveness
- Work on a high-traffic, large-scale service and tackle system design, performance tuning, and operational excellence
- Own the full development lifecycle end-to-end (design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations) across frontend and backend
- Collaborate with a global team with opportunities for English communication and a culture that welcomes improvements
- Opportunity to contribute to cross-product/shared platform development across the travel domain

Position Details

You will be responsible for the development and operation of both the frontend and backend of Rakuten Travel's travel experience services.
Specifically, you will work on the design, implementation, testing, and deployment of systems in collaboration with team members, product managers, and QA engineers.

Additionally, you will be responsible for improving frontend functionality and performance, handling monitoring and alerts, and responding to user inquiries. In this role, you are expected to function as a role model for the next generation of engineers, envision the future of the system, and lead the organization's growth.

You will have the opportunity to enhance your technical skills and achieve results through collaboration with the team. This environment allows you to advance your career and tackle various challenges by contributing to the organization's growth.

Work Environment

Team Structure
- Within the travel engineering organization, cross-functional roles such as product, engineering, QA, and reliability work together to build and operate services
- There are opportunities for collaboration with global teams in English
- Age group: Early 30s

Employee Background
- The organization includes diverse roles such as Applications Engineers, Product Managers, UI/UX Engineers, and Web Applications QA
- Members bring experience in web service development/operations, quality assurance, and product planning

Development Tools

- Languages/Frameworks: JavaScript, Node.js, Vue.js, Express.js, PostgreSQL, Redis
- Middleware: Nginx
- Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Docker, Jenkins
- Monitoring: New Relic (APM), Pager Duty
- Tools: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Confluence, JIRA, Bitbucket, etc.

Mandatory Qualifications:

Technical Skills/Experiences
Full-Stack Development:
- 5+ years of experience in full-stack web application development
- Proven experience designing and building production-grade RESTful APIs and backend services
- Deep understanding of relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL — including schema design, indexing strategies, query optimization, and performance tuning at scale
- Strong JavaScript across both frontend and backend (Vue.js/Nuxt, Node.js, Express.js)
- Experience designing test strategies and implementing tests across the stack (Jest or equivalent)

Architecture & Design:
- Demonstrated experience owning and driving system architecture decisions across frontend, backend, and infrastructure
- Ability to evaluate trade-offs, justify technical decisions, and guide a team through complex design challenges
- Experience leading code reviews and setting engineering standards
- Experience making technical documentation (architecture specs, development specs)

Infrastructure & DevOps:
- Hands-on experience managing and operating Kubernetes clusters in a production environment

- Experience designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, including security and quality gates (Jenkins or equivalent)

- Experience operating on public cloud platforms (GCP or AWS) — networking, storage, scaling, cost management

- Solid understanding of web security principles and their practical application

Soft Skills/Experiences
- Proactively involves others to solve problems and improve situations
- Curious mindset and continuous learning in a fast-moving environment
- Effective communication with diverse stakeholders
- Willing to tackle new challenges and drive improvements
- Strong team player who promotes collaboration inside and outside the team
- Execute tasks while considering the potential impact and scope of influence on other areas, instead of simply implementing what's written in the specifications
- Identify what the problem is and work together to devise an approach to address it

Desired Qualifications:

- Experience in Java-based web application development (e.g., Spring Framework)
- Experience contributing to cross-product/shared platform development in the travel domain
- Experience building and operating services on cloud environments such as GCP
- Experience improving operations using observability tools (e.g., New Relic)
- Experience with performance tuning, incident response, and operational automation (e.g., CI/CD)
- Experience communicating in English in a technical context

Other Information:

Additional information on Location

Rakuten Crimson House (Head office)
 

Additional information on English Qualification

TOEIC Score exceeding 800 (or similar level of English ability) or a University Degree earned in an English-speaking country.
Proof of qualifications will be required by the time of the job offer.
If no evidence is available to prove the qualifications denoted above, taking an IP test, organized by Rakuten, during selection process is required.

Additional information of Rakuten Group, Inc.
- Benefits:https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/careers/benefit/
- Recruitment Information:https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/careers/information/
- Rakuten Culture:https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/careers/culture/

#engineer #frontendengineer #webdeveloper #commerce #RakutenTravel #RakutenTravelExperiences #Java #JavaScript 

Languages:

English (Overall - 3 - Advanced)