Job DescriptionTranslated from Japanese
▼Job Description
♦︎Background♦︎
Kauche is continuing to grow as a discovery-based EC platform, achieving over 6 million cumulative downloads, a 30x increase in GMV, a 252x increase in gross profit, and a 68x increase in DAU in two and a half years since pivoting. The core feature supporting this growth is "Kauche Farm." With its unique world view combining a crop-growing game and EC, it has cultivated a habit among users to open the app morning, noon, and night. The high engagement frequency of 38 minutes per day and over 20 days per month originates from this farm, and advertising revenue is also established as one of the main revenue streams through ads integrated into quests and rewards within the farm (video rewards, offer walls, affiliate, survey ads).
The key to the next stage is an overwhelming improvement in ad view rates through changes in user experience. We are tasked with redesigning the ad experience itself, transforming "work" into an "actionable experience that users want to repeat."
Currently, one PdM is responsible for operating existing ASPs in the advertising domain. In this position, you will participate as a PdM specializing in experience design, collaborating with the existing PdM.
♦︎Product Features♦︎
Kauche is a discovery-based social EC app. Discovery-based EC is the opposite of traditional search-based EC, where users "search for what they want and buy it." Instead, it offers an experience where users "discover what they want while browsing and then buy it." Through serendipitous encounters with sale items and participatory features like reviews and quests, we are creating a space where shopping transcends mere purchasing to become an emotionally engaging experience. Cumulative downloads surpassed 6 million in March 2026, with users spread evenly across the country. Notably, it is frequently used by women in their 40s and 50s who have had little prior experience with EC.
Strengths include abundant elements for daily enjoyment, such as the crop-growing game "Kauche Farm" and the posting feature "Everyone's Posts," leading to many users engaging for an average of 38 minutes per day and over 20 days per month, exhibiting behaviors entirely different from traditional EC users.
♦︎Job Responsibilities♦︎
In this position, you will primarily be responsible for designing the advertising experience, while also taking on a partial role in Kauche Farm. You will focus on "designing ad and farm experiences that customers want to engage with themselves," leaving ad delivery logic and revenue optimization to specialists.
① Designing the experience of Advertising x Gamification (Main Area)
Currently, video rewards, offer walls, affiliate ads, and surveys are the main sources of advertising revenue.
The current video rewards, offer walls, affiliate ads, and surveys are "work" done to obtain rewards. The design philosophy is to transform this into an "actionable experience."
② Partial Role in Kauche Farm
You will be responsible for designing the integration of the advertising experience into Kauche Farm's quest and engagement features. You will cross-apply characters, world views, and stories to both advertising and the farm, pursuing the dual goals of farm KPIs (DAU/retention rate, etc.) and advertising KPIs (view rate/revenue, etc.).
♦︎Team & Colleagues♦︎
▪️Direct Supervisor: Shunsuke Sato, Executive Officer, CXO
Born in 1998. While attending Meiji University, he gained experience as an engineering intern at a Fintech company and as a marketing intern at Kauche from its early stages. After graduating in April 2022, he joined Kauche as a full-time employee. In the summer of 2023, he began planning "Kauche Farm," led the development team, and released the service in October of the same year. He was appointed Department Manager in April 2024 and became Executive Officer, CXO (Chief Experience Officer) in March 2026.
▪️Colleague: Yuya Komae, Senior PdM, Kauche Farm
Born in 1995 in Tokyo. Graduated from the University of Tokyo with a degree in Economics. Joined DeNA as a PdM for the live streaming app "Pococha" after graduation. Previously worked as a data analyst and PdM for Pococha US. Joined Kauche in January 2026. As a PdM under the head of Kauche Farm's experience design, he will design the advertising and farm experiences to be seamless.
▪️Colleague: Ryo Kambayashi, AD/UX PdM, Kauche Farm
After graduating from Keio University, he joined DeNA. He worked in sales in the EC business and in HR in the professional baseball business, responsible for organizational and human resource development for team members such as players and coaches. He was involved with Kauche as a side job from its early stages, joined full-time after a year and a half, and was Kauche's first HR, handling everything from recruitment to organizational development. Subsequently, he was responsible for Customer Success and Site Organization at Kauche. After gaining experience as a manager in the Customer Success department at Wolt, a food delivery service from Finland, he returned to Kauche and became a Product Manager.
▪️Collaborating Teams
Will collaborate closely with backend engineers, mobile engineers, designers, the advertising business planning team, and the partner sales team.
▼Required Skills/Experience
* 2+ years of PdM experience in B2C apps (games, manga, continuous learning, point-based rewards, or social apps)
* Practical experience in gamification design / continuous experience design (able to discuss measures that impacted KPIs)
* Basic understanding of behavioral economics (loss aversion, prospect theory, framing, nudging)
* Experience collaborating with engineers and designers
* Ability to evaluate measures and determine priorities through a certain level of data analysis (SQL/BQ)
▼Preferred Skills/Experience
* Fast learning ability utilizing AI
* Openness to unlearning
* Experience in experience design for video rewards, offer walls, surveys, or affiliate marketing
* Experience in UX design leveraging characters and world views
* Experience designing drivers for retention and continuation rate improvement in manga or game apps
* Experience implementing the framework of "Intuition → Surprise → Story"
▼Ideal Candidate Profile
* Sincerity and benevolence to genuinely wish for customer happiness: Able to evaluate the quality of measures based on "whether I want to deliver this to the customer."
* Strong sense of ownership: Committed to the revenue of the advertising business, which is crucial for Kauche's sales, and responsible for both PL and UX.
* Obsession with transforming "times of endurance" into "slightly delightful experiences": Genuinely committed to making ads themselves an enjoyable experience, rather than optimizing unit prices or delivery efficiency.
* Stance to say "no" to designs that may increase short-term revenue but erode customer trust in the long term in advertising monetization.
* Empathy with Kauche's mission "Bring Fun to Everyday Life" and its values (Love Change, Create Tailwinds, Connect with Results, Cherish Your Passions).
▼Job Highlights
* Become a frontline designer in "making ads into content."
This is a rare opportunity in Japan to be genuinely committed to the challenge of creating ads themselves as enjoyable experiences, rather than just mechanisms to get banner clicks. The product, with its unique world of Kauche Farm, is the perfect canvas for this endeavor.
* Focus on "offense" with a stable revenue base.
ASP advertising at Kauche is an established stable revenue stream. With a system in place where specialists focus on defense, you can concentrate on experience design and revenue-driving measures. This is a phase where we aim for discontinuous growth on an established foundation, rather than starting from scratch.
* Implement behavioral economics and gamification in a product with billions in scale.
This is a rare environment to implement and verify loss aversion, prospect theory, nudging, and achievement design in an app used daily for over 38 minutes and more than 20 days a month. There is a high-resolution feedback loop where measures directly reflect KPIs.
* Workplace where full AI utilization is assumed.
All engineers and PdMs are required to fully utilize AI, and the company covers individual usage budgets. AI is integrated into all aspects of prototyping, research, and requirements definition, enabling the shortest possible ramp-up time.
▼Development Environment
We thoroughly utilize modern technology selection 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
* Analysis Platform: BigQuery, Looker Studio
* AI/LLM Tools: Claude, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, etc. (budget for all employees)
* Other: GitHub, Slack, Notion, Figma
* Development Style: Agile development (5-9 deployments per day, 12 feature releases per month)
▼Employment Type
Full-time (No fixed term)
▼Probationary Period
Yes (3 months)
▼Salary
Annual salary ¥7,200,000 - ¥15,600,000
▼Minimum Annual Salary (JPY)
720
▼Maximum Annual Salary (JPY)
1560
▼Work Location
Tokyo Headquarters
Asia Building 9F, 1-12-16 Jinnan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0041
Commute Frequency: Hybrid (3 days in office per week)
*Scope of Change: Headquarters and all branches and sales offices nationwide.
▼Working Hours
Flextime system (applicable to all positions for full-time employees)
Standard working hours: 8 hours per day
Flextime: 6:00 - 22:00
Core time: 11:00 - 15:00
Break time: 1 hour, flexible to take
▼Break Time
Break time: 1 hour, flexible to take
▼Overtime Work
Yes
▼Holidays, Paid Leave, Special Leave
Complete two-day weekend system (including national holidays, New Year's holidays, etc.)
Annual paid leave
Special leave (5 days upon joining)
F-Leave (Leave for women's health issues/examinations, once a month)
Congratulatory and condolence leave
Maternity and childcare leave
Childcare and nursing care leave
▼Benefits
Social insurance complete (Health insurance/Employees' Pension/Long-term care insurance/Employment insurance/Workers' accident insurance)
Commuting allowance (up to ¥30,000 per month)
Stock options that do not expire after leaving the company
▼Allowances
Referral recruitment allowance
Club activities system (partial subsidy for activity costs)
Book and seminar subsidy system
KAUpos allowance (peer bonus system)
Welcome and farewell party expense subsidy
▼Insurance Enrollment
Social insurance complete (Health insurance/Employees' Pension/Long-term care insurance/Employment insurance/Workers' accident insurance)
▼Measures to Prevent Passive Smoking in the Workplace
Indoor smoking prohibited in principle (smoking area available)
▼Education/Skill Development/Career Advancement
Book and seminar subsidy system / internal study sessions, etc.
▼Health
F-Leave (Leave for women's health issues/examinations, once a month) / Consultation available with contracted medical professionals, industrial physician available
▼Interview/Selection Process
To eliminate mutual mismatches, we will carefully assess both technical skills and cultural fit.
Casual meeting (Let's chat first)
First interview (Technical/Cultural: PdM, CXO / 60 minutes)
Assignment selection (Technical: PdM, CXO, COO / Max 90 minutes)
Final interview (In-person: CEO, COO / Max 90 minutes)
*Reference checks may be conducted between the final interview and the assignment selection.
▼Other
* This position requires a high level of communication in Japanese, therefore, Japanese proficiency equivalent to JLPT N1 or higher is a mandatory requirement.
■Recruitment Page
https://enjoy-working.kauche.com