Engineering Manager (Mobile Engineer) | API Traffic 565x Growth | 6M+ Downloads | Seeking EM for Rapidly Growing Social EC Platform (Updated 6/29)Translated from Japanese

▼Job Description ▪️ Product Features KAUCHE is a discovery-based social EC app. Discovery-based EC is the opposite of traditional search-based EC, where you search for what you want and buy it. Instead, it offers an experience where users discover and buy what they want while browsing casually. We are creating a place where shopping goes beyond mere purchasing to become an emotionally moving experience through serendipitous encounters with sale items and participatory features like reviews and quests. As of March 2026, we surpassed 6 million cumulative downloads, with users spread evenly across the country. A notable characteristic is that many of our users are women aged 40-50 who have had little prior experience with EC. Our strengths lie in the abundance of elements that can be enjoyed daily, such as the crop-growing game 'KAUCHE Farm' and the posting feature 'Everyone's Posts.' Many users engage frequently, averaging 38 minutes per day and visiting more than 20 days a month, exhibiting behaviors entirely different from typical EC users. ▪️ The World KAUCHE Aims to Create With the mission 'Bringing Fun to Everyday Life,' KAUCHE is creating 'A New Form of Living Sphere.' Our goal is to restore human richness, such as discovery, serendipity, and a moderate liveliness, to the EC 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 stay, much like a train station or a shopping street. We are shaping this through the synergy of social, entertainment, and commerce. Information gathering, play, and shopping are all loosely connected within the same flow, transforming tasks into enjoyment. 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 embrace change as a strength and continue to update conventions with an operation model that is not dependent on headcount. Our vision is to become a living infrastructure where 100 million people experience 100 million different kinds of enjoyment. With 100 employees, we aim for a corporate value of 1 trillion yen and will forge a living sphere that should become the centerpiece of retail in 10 years. ▪️ Job Responsibilities In this position, you will be responsible for the end-to-end management of the mobile engineering organization and the promotion of technical strategy. - Engineering Organization Management Enhance the capabilities of the mobile team through recruitment, training, and performance evaluation, as well as goal setting. Connect members' career aspirations with business needs to create an environment where 'you can grow by being on this team.' - iOS and Android Technical Strategy Planning and Promotion While maintaining a 'dual-wielding' style, lead the prioritization and execution of medium- to long-term technical investments such as domain separation, architectural evolution, and AI-Native development. You will be required to provide convincing rationale for technical decisions to engineers. - Continuous Improvement of Team Productivity Identify bottlenecks in the development flow and implement solutions. Embody and develop KAUCHE's development culture of 'We can build faster by improving quality.' - Project Promotion and Stakeholder Management Collaborate with Product Managers, Designers, QA, and Backend Engineers to manage project staffing and progress. Appropriately escalate and report to the CTO and management. - Fostering Development Culture Lead community activities such as study sessions, reading groups, and technical presentations, and disseminate KAUCHE's engineering culture externally. ▪️ Challenges in this Position - Scaling the 'Dual-Wielding' Team While the system where all mobile engineers handle both iOS and Android increases development flexibility, it also has high training costs. We need to design recruitment and onboarding processes to 'increase headcount while maintaining the strength of dual-wielding.' - Balancing Technical Investment and Feature Development Speed In a rapidly growing product, feature development often takes priority over resolving technical debt. We need the foresight to determine the timing and scope of domain separation and architectural improvements, and to advance these while persuading the business side. - Establishing AI-Native Development Processes We need to create a system that integrates AI tools into the team's development workflow, rather than leaving it to individual skills. The challenge is to lead the transformation from 'people who can use AI' to 'teams that have AI integrated.' ▪️ People and Technical Culture You'll Work With ▼ Direct Supervisor: Kyohei Ikematsu, Executive Officer, CTO After completing graduate studies in Computational Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology, joined DeNA in 2014. Worked on product development for EC, SNS, and healthcare as a backend engineer and engineering manager. Joined KAUCHE in May of the following year after participating as a side job since 2020. Held positions as backend engineer, engineering manager, and product manager before assuming the current role in October 2023. ▪️ Technical Culture - We have many senior members in their 30s who have experience as Tech Leads, EM, and CTO at mega-venture companies and tech startups. Our 'dual-wielding' style, where all mobile engineers handle development for both iOS and Android, enables a fast and flexible development system. - We work in cross-functional teams with backend engineers, PMs, designers, and QA engineers, collaborating closely. - 'We can build faster by improving quality.' - Speed and quality are not trade-offs. We emphasize testing, CI/CD infrastructure, and continuous refactoring, diligently executing the 'haste makes waste' principle. - [Example of migrating from Firestore to Cloud Spanner](https://zenn.dev/kauche/articles/1e733da3748ee1) ▪️ Culture of Developing Close to the Business and Customers - We work closely with PMs and designers, syncing deeply on business metrics, KPI status, and response strategies to guide development. - We emphasize quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback (usage experience, inquiries, social media posts, reviews, etc.), developing with constant awareness of customer context. After release, we analyze qualitative and quantitative changes to inform the next steps. This rapid development cycle based on customer feedback is characteristic of a B2C service. ▪️ Career Path After joining as a Mobile EM leading the team, we envision a progression to VPoE or Technical Lead roles depending on the business phase. Experience as an EM for both iOS and Android, combined with achievements in organizational design, recruitment, and technical strategy at a rapidly growing startup, will lead to high market value as an engineering leader. Expectations for the First 3 Months (Onboarding) We do not 'leave you alone' immediately after joining. We provide support for your ramp-up with the entire team, along with clear milestones. - Month 1: Understand the Team and Technology Landscape Gain an understanding of the team's status, challenges, and aspirations through 1-on-1s with all mobile members. Catch up on the existing codebase, architecture, and development flow, aiming to be able to articulate 'what the challenges are' in your own words. - Month 2: Lead Your First Improvement Propose and execute one small improvement initiative for the development flow. Participate in recruitment activities and contribute to the selection process from a mobile engineering perspective. - Month 3: Outline Your Vision as an EM Formulate the initial draft of the mobile team's technical roadmap. Aim to be able to present your vision for 'How to evolve KAUCHE's mobile engineering' to the CTO and management. ▼Required Skills/Experience - 3+ years of practical experience in iOS or Android app development (experience in developing for consumer-facing services) - Experience in Tech Lead, team building, and process improvement - Ability to drive software development with ownership ▼Preferred Skills/Experience - Experience in engineering organization management (recruitment, training, evaluation) - Development experience in both iOS and Android (Swift / Kotlin) - Experience in architectural design and technology selection - Backend development experience (e.g., Go) - Experience improving development workflows using AI tools - Development experience in a startup or venture environment ▼Ideal Candidate Profile ▪️ Those Who Share Our Vision - Agreement with 'Bringing Fun to Everyday Life' and 'Creating a New Form of Living Sphere.' - Agreement with 'Love Change,' 'Create Tailwinds,' 'Connect with Results,' and 'Cherish Your Passions.' - Those who feel there is potential in the EC experience, even if only slightly. ▪️ Those with a Challenging Spirit - 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. ▼Attractions of the Job ▪️ Mobile is the Main Battlefield of the Business As the customer touchpoint is the mobile app, your decisions as an EM will directly impact business metrics. You can test your skills as an EM in an environment where 'technical decisions translate into numbers.' ▪️ Rare Experience Overseeing Both iOS and Android While mobile engineers typically specialize in one OS, at KAUCHE, you can gain experience as an EM overseeing both. Cross-platform technical judgment skills will lead to unique market value. ▪️ Close Proximity to the CTO and Involvement in Technical Strategy Due to the small organization size, you can discuss and shape technical strategy directly with the CTO (Kyohei Ikematsu / formerly of DeNA). You can be the starting point of strategy, rather than having it dictated from above. ▪️ Workplace Where Full AI Utilization is Assumed All engineers and PMs are required to fully utilize AI, and the company covers individual usage budgets. This is an environment where you can pursue the forefront of AI-driven mobile development as a team. ▼Development Environment Languages: Swift, Kotlin, Go - UI Frameworks: SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose - Architecture/Design: Android Architecture Components, MVVM - Development Environment: Xcode, Android Studio - Infrastructure: Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Cloud Spanner, Pub/Sub, etc.) - Communication: gRPC, Protocol Buffers (SwiftProtobuf) - CI/CD: Bitrise, GitHub Actions, Cloud Build - Configuration Management: Terraform - Monitoring: Crashlytics, 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 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 employee (No fixed term) ▼Trial Period Yes (3 months) *No change in benefits or conditions during the trial period ▼Salary Annual salary: ¥9,600,000 - ¥15,600,000 ▼Annual Salary Lower Limit (10,000 JPY) 960 ▼Annual Salary Upper Limit (10,000 JPY) 1560 ▼Work Location Asia Building 9F, 1-12-16 Jinnan, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0041 Frequency of Attendance: Hybrid work (3 days in office per week) *Scope of Change: Headquarters and all branch offices, sales offices nationwide. ▼Working Hours Flextime system (applies to all positions for full-time employees) - Standard working hours: 8 hours per day - Flexible time: 6:00 - 22:00 - Core time: 11:00 - 15:00 - Break time: 1 hour, taken freely ▼Break Time 60 minutes ▼Overtime Work Yes ▼Holidays, Paid Leave, Special Leave - Complete two-day weekend system (including national holidays, year-end holidays, etc.) - Annual paid leave - Special leave (5 days upon joining) - 'F-Leave' (Leave for women's health issues/examinations/monthly) - Congratulatory and Condolence Leave - Maternity and Childcare Leave - Childcare and Nursing Care Leave ▼Benefits - Stock options that do not expire after leaving the company - Club activity system (partial subsidy for activity expenses) - Book and seminar subsidy system - Subsidy for welcome and farewell parties ▼Allowances - Commuting allowance (up to ¥30,000 per month) - Referral bonus - KAUpos allowance (peer bonus system) ▼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) ▼Education, Skill Development, Career Advancement Book and seminar subsidy system ▼Health Consultation available with contracted medical professionals / Industrial physician available ▼Interview/Selection Process Document screening -> Interviews (multiple) -> Skills assessment -> Reference check -> Final interview ▼Other *This position requires advanced communication skills in Japanese, therefore, Japanese proficiency equivalent to JLPT N1 or higher is a mandatory requirement. ■ Careers Page https://enjoy-working.kauche.com