Associate/Software Engineer, Data Platform

Company Overview

Rakuten International manages seven different businesses worldwide with a workforce exceeding 4,000 employees. Known for innovation and leadership in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment, and communications, it serves over a billion members globally. Rakuten Viki, a division focusing on Asian entertainment streaming, offers a platform featuring primetime shows and movies with subtitles in more than 150 languages. With its headquarters in San Mateo, California, and offices in Singapore, Seoul, and Shanghai, Rakuten Viki connects a global community passionate about Asian culture and entertainment.

This position is based in Singapore and reports to the Engineering Manager.

Key Responsibilities

• Enhance the architecture and functionality of the data platform to meet evolving business requirements.
• Develop scalable, reusable data pipelines and frameworks for ingestion, processing, storage, and consumption.
• Conduct root cause analyses on internal and external data systems to address specific business inquiries.
• Maintain and improve existing applications and workflows ensuring performance, accuracy, SLA compliance, and architectural consistency.
• Ensure data engineering best practices, including clean coding, proper automation testing, continuous integration/deployment, logging, monitoring, and alerting.
• Engage in code reviews adhering to high-quality standards and development guidelines.

Requirements

• Strong fundamentals in computer science and software architecture principles.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related discipline.
• Between 1 and 4 years experience in Data Engineering, Backend, Site Reliability Engineering, or Platform Engineering roles.
• Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and system design.
• Capable of producing maintainable, clean, testable production-grade code rather than simple scripts.
• New graduates are encouraged and will be considered.
• Effective communication skills to clearly explain technical topics within the team.
• Demonstrated self-motivation and enthusiasm for continuous learning and improvement.
• Proficiency in SQL and working with relational databases.
• Experience with big data pipelines and datasets.
• Familiarity with big data technologies such as Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Hive (or their equivalents).
• Experience working with SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Knowledge of orchestration or workflow tools like Apache Airflow or similar.
• Cloud platform experience is a plus but not required.
• Understanding of stream-processing tools such as Flink or Spark-Streaming or their equivalents.
• Hands-on experience in programming languages like Python or Scala (or equivalents).
• Familiarity with version control systems such as Git, and collaborative workflows including pull requests and code reviews.

Diversity and Inclusion

Rakuten provides equal opportunities to all candidates and employees, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, or any other protected characteristic under applicable laws.

Core Company Principles

• Commit to continuous improvement and strive for complete success (Kaizen).
• Maintain professionalism with a determination to excel.
• Implement the Rakuten cycle: hypothesize, practice, validate.
• Focus on maximizing customer satisfaction.
• Value speed and decisiveness: act promptly, set clear objectives, and engage proactively.