Software Engineer 2

Job Summary: In this role, you will design, develop, deploy, operate and improve backend systems to meet user needs and business objectives. You will work through ambiguous requirements, contribute to clear specifications, leverage AI tools to rapidly build and refine high-quality code, and collaborate cross-functionally to deliver scalable backend solutions. Your role will involve debugging and improving existing systems, ensuring optimal performance, automating build and deployment processes and integrating new features to enhance functionality. With a strong foundation in systems thinking, cloud technologies, DevOps practices, and adaptability, you will continuously improve how software is designed, built, and operated in an AI-assisted development environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and Own Systems: Design and evolve backend architecture end-to-end, including APIs, data models, and storage. Establish clear specifications, contracts and behaviors that enable reliable scaling and effective AI-assisted development. Contribute to architectural and infrastructure decisions and communicate tradeoffs across simplicity, performance, scalability, security and long-term maintainability.

• Leverage AI to Write High-Quality Code: Use AI tools to generate, iterate on, and refine implementations, producing clean, maintainable code aligned with established specifications and Rakuten engineering standards. Exercise strong judgment in evaluating and validating AI-generated output.
• Collaborate: Work across engineering, product, DevOps and design to navigate ambiguous problems, shape technical direction, and align on priorities and tradeoffs. Help shape what should be built, not just how it is implemented, how it should be deployed and operated with a focus on delivering meaningful user and business impact.
• Validate System Behavior: Develop and implement testing, validation, deployment and monitoring strategies to ensure correctness of application and infrastructure changes including AI-generated code. Proactively identify edge cases, failure modes, and inconsistencies.
• Ensure Performance, Reliability and Observability: Build services that are performant, testable, and resilient in production. Implement monitoring, logging, and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement. Contribute to capacity planning, performance optimization, availability, and reliability of cloud-based systems.
• Operate as a Systems-Oriented Engineer: Debug complex production issues and drive them to resolution in collaboration with the team. Adapt quickly to new tools and paradigms, using AI to accelerate development, prototype rapidly, and continuously improve engineering workflows and operational practices.

• Manage Cloud Infrastructure: Work hands-on with any one cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure to provision, configure, secure, and operate application infrastructure. Use Infrastructure as Code and automation to ensure environments are consistent, scalable, and maintainable.

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Production-level application development experience using Node.js.
• Familiarity with service-oriented architecture concepts, principles, and patterns.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with services like EC2, Lambda, API Gateway, Apache Kafka, and S3.
• Experience with database technologies and a strong understanding of database schema design
• Experience with event-driven architectures.
• Understanding of cloud-native application architecture, scalability, availability, security, and cost considerations.
• Familiarity with Docker and containerized application deployment; Kubernetes experience is a plus.
• Ability to write automation scripts using Bash, Python, Node.js, or similar scripting languages.
• Familiarity with secrets management, IAM, authentication, authorization, and basic cloud security practices.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot, Cursor) to generate, evaluate, and refine code /script.
• Ability to reason about system behavior, identify tradeoffs, and make sound technical decisions in ambiguous situations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical concepts, decisions, and tradeoffs across cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have: • Familiarity with spec-driven development, including the ability to clarify ambiguous requirements and define clear system behavior • Experience with additional programming languages such as Python or Golang. • Familiarity with a Frontend JavaScript Framework, like React, Vue.js, or Angular. • Demonstrated ability to validate and debug complex systems, including AI-generated code. • Strong product intuition and attention to user experience when designing solutions. Minimum Requirements:

• B.S. in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience required

• 5-7 years relevant work experience required

• 4+ years of production-level application development experience using Java/J2EE, ideally with frameworks like Quarkus or Spring.

• Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies and adapt quickly in a rapidly evolving development environment.

• Familiarity with Docker and cloud infrastructure management.