Senior Software Engineer

About our Company

Rakuten, Inc. (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 4755), is one of the worlds leading Internet service companies, providing a variety of consumer and business-focused services including e-commerce, travel, banking, securities, credit card, emoney, portal & media, online marketing and professional sports. Rakuten is expanding globally and currently has operations throughout Asia, Western Europe, and the Americas. Founded in 1997, Rakuten is headquartered in Tokyo, with over 10,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit http://global.rakuten.com/corp/about/.

Rakuten India Development Center is the second largest technology hub outside of Japan that enables & builds platforms for global E commerce, Payments, Digital, AI and Data Science services across the globe. Rakuten India is located in Bengaluru, also known as the Silicon Valley of India, where there is an abundance of talent. The work environment is seamless same as Tokyo, San Francisco, or Singapore. It has an easy and smooth collaboration across all Rakuten divisions. Rakuten India is an in-house innovation technology centre. Rakuten is ranked in top 20 most innovative companies in the world by Forbes.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Senior Software Engineer full stack to join our engineering team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining large-scale, high-traffic applications and distributed systems. You will collaborate with geographically distributed teams across multiple countries, contribute to architecture decisions, and champion engineering best practices. A keen interest in AI-powered tooling and LLMs is a strong plus.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable full-stack applications using Java (Spring Boot) on the backend and ReactJS on the frontend.
• Build and operate high-traffic, large-scale distributed systems with a focus on reliability, performance, and fault tolerance.
• Architect and manage containerised microservices on Kubernetes, ensuring smooth CI/CD pipelines and production deployments.
• Implement and optimise caching strategies using Redis to improve application throughput and latency.
• Design and manage relational database schemas and queries in MySQL, ensuring data integrity and query performance.
• Participate in system design discussions, code reviews, and architectural planning sessions to continuously raise the engineering bar.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, QA engineers, and globally distributed engineering teams across time zones.
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude) to accelerate delivery and improve code quality.
• Build, prototype, or contribute to AI-powered features, internal tools, or proof-of-concept (PoC) solutions using LLM capabilities.
• Mentor junior engineers; provide technical guidance and constructive feedback.
• Proactively identify and resolve production incidents, performance bottlenecks, and technical debt.

REQUIRED SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

• Java & Spring Boot 5+ years of hands-on experience building production-grade REST APIs and microservices.
• ReactJS Solid proficiency in building responsive, component-driven front-end applications.
• Kubernetes – Production experience deploying, scaling, and managing containerised workloads.
• Redis – Experience with caching, rate limiting, and session management patterns.
• MySQL – Strong command of schema design, query optimisation, indexing, and replication.
• Distributed Systems – Proven track record building and supporting large-scale, high-traffic applications.
• Communication – Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to convey complex technical concepts clearly.
• Global Collaboration – Demonstrated experience working with geographically distributed teams across multiple countries and Eastern time zones.
• AI Tooling – Hands-on experience leveraging AI tools such as Cursor and Claude in day-to-day development workflows.
• AI/LLM Applications – Experience building AI-powered applications, solutions, or PoCs that leverage LLM capabilities.

GOOD TO HAVE

• GCP – Familiarity with Google Cloud Platform services such as GCS, GKE, IAM, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Dataproc.
• GoLang – Experience writing performant backend services or CLI tools in Go.
• LLMs & Generative AI – Deeper knowledge of LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex), prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, or fine-tuning workflows.
• Observability – Experience with monitoring and alerting using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or Cloud Monitoring.
• Event-Driven Architecture – Familiarity with Pub/Sub, or similar messaging systems.

WHAT WE OFFER

• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge distributed systems and AI-powered products.
• Collaborative, inclusive, and globally diverse team culture.
• Continuous learning/training — conferences, certifications, and courses.
• Hybrid work model.
• Direct exposure to modern AI tooling and LLM application development.