✨ Engineering Manager, Store Applications ✨
We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a team responsible for the software used daily by store staff and field operators, with a hands-on approach to implementation. This role spans engineering, product, and people management, requiring someone who can balance technical and operational perspectives to build a strong team that ensures the stable operation and evolution of systems running in physical stores.
Summary:
- Lead the engineering of production software supporting store staff and field operations.
- Hands-on technical leadership – read, review, and contribute to code as needed.
- Hybrid tech stack: Maintain existing Unity / Blazor / C# applications while gradually migrating to a newer React / TypeScript stack.
- Collaborate with BizDev, Operations, and other relevant engineering teams.
- Hire, grow, and manage the team, covering recruitment, coaching, planning, and standard setting.
Team & Platform Context: 🚀
We utilize C# (.NET) for both backend and edge communication services, ensuring consistent development across systems. On the robot side, ROS/C++/Python runs on NVIDIA Jetson AGX, connecting to cloud services via a continuously connected daemon.
The Challenge: Software Meets Hardware ⚙️
The software for this position (both frontend and backend) is the direct interface for end-users, leading to constantly diverse and evolving requirements. This role demands managing the speed of software development alongside the constraints of hardware development. It goes beyond simple coding or SaaS development, requiring the flexibility to move forward realistically within constraints and the leadership to elevate the software engineering standards of the entire organization.
- Bridging the Cycle Gap: Hardware and automation development cycles are typically longer than pure software development. Decisions are needed not only to wait for hardware readiness but also to circumvent challenges with software ingenuity or to implement value verification features before hardware completion.
- Elevating Engineering Standards: While specialized teams possess high expertise in their respective domains, they may not always be strong in modern SaaS development practices or Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs). This role bridges common understandings in software development and enhances the robustness and scalability of the entire system.
職務内容 (Job Description) 📝
Lead product engineering for Store Applications 🏪
Collaborate with other teams to translate ambiguous requirements into actionable engineering plans for the team. By bringing technical feasibility, UX implementation quality, delivery risks, and actual field operations into requirement discussions, this role is expected to participate in and, where necessary, make decisions within its domain.
- Translate ambiguous product and operational requirements into executable engineering plans.
- Early visualization of product, UX, technical, and delivery risks, and proposing concrete alternatives for unclear requirements.
- Propose and advise from an engineering perspective on roadmap and scope decisions, and make decisions as necessary within the assigned domain.
UX Quality and Design System Adoption ✨
This position is responsible for the quality of the user experience provided by the team. It involves engagement not as a designer, but as an engineering leader guiding the design intent and UX requirements to be preserved in both legacy and modern frontend implementations. Continuous verification of actual metrics on how much operational friction for store staff has been reduced is a prerequisite.
- Lead engineering implementation and internal adoption of the design system (Figma, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui, React).
- Maintain a consistent user experience across both legacy and modern screens and touchpoints.
- Measure success not by the number of components, but by the actual reduction in operational friction.
Drive technical execution and modernization 🚀
Guide the team across existing Unity / Blazor / C# codebases and the emerging React / TypeScript direction. Carefully designing the order of modernization to avoid disrupting live operations is a crucial role. Backend and frontend leads hold technical authority within their respective domains, while this role is responsible for cross-stack alignment and overall area consistency.
- Design the sequence of migration tasks, minimizing risk to operating stores.
- Regularly read, review, and, when necessary, write production code.
- Manage technical debt across the entire Store Applications domain and lead trade-off discussions.
Own production delivery and reliability 🛡️
As these systems operate in physical stores, safe delivery is a minimum requirement. This role is responsible for release quality and production readiness across its domain, including CI/CD, testing, observability, hotfixes, rollbacks, and incident response, reflecting learnings from incidents into planning.
- Responsible for CI/CD, release quality, hotfixes/rollbacks, and incident response for the entire assigned domain.
- Continuously improve the level of testing, observability, and operational readiness for the physical store environment.
- Ensure feedback from production is reliably reflected in engineering priorities.
Build and grow the team 🌱
Build a team capable of responsibly operating production software by hiring, coaching, and managing engineers, and establishing engineering standards. Member growth and team health are core responsibilities, not peripheral tasks.
- Hire and manage engineers. Conduct 1-on-1s and foster member growth.
- Establish standards for code quality, testing, reviews, and production readiness.
- Improve planning quality, capacity management, and delivery predictability.
応募要件 (Requirements) ✅
We are looking for individuals with experience leading engineering as a manager, tech lead, or strong product engineering lead, who have released and operated software that real users rely on. The ability to make grounded trade-offs between speed, quality, reliability, UX, and maintainability, and to explain those decisions accurately to non-engineers, is crucial.
Must have:
- Practical experience in software development centered around C# / .NET, and design, implementation, and operation experience in production systems.
- Frontend or user-facing product development experience (including practical experience with Unity / Blazor / React / TypeScript).
- Basic understanding of REST API / gRPC, and experience in design or implementation of frontend-backend integration.
- Practical experience with development workflows using Git/GitHub (code reviews, branch management, CI/CD integration).
- Experience improving operational quality, including testing, observability, and incident response (test design, monitoring, release/rollback operations, etc.).
- Experience leading engineers, engineering teams, or strong product engineering initiatives.
- Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into executable engineering plans and build consensus with stakeholders.
- Communication skills in Japanese (native or JLPT N1 equivalent) and English (business level).
Nice to have:
- Experience operating or improving services using Azure / Docker / Kubernetes.
- Experience with data modeling and operation using Redis / MongoDB / PostgreSQL.
- Design system implementation experience (Figma / Tailwind CSS / shadcn/ui, etc.).
- Software development or operation experience in IoT / robotics / retail operations domains.
- Experience driving gradual migration from legacy to modern stacks (migration planning, parallel operation, risk management).
- Practical experience in people management such as engineer recruitment, development, evaluation, and 1-on-1s.