Software engineer
- Location
- San Francisco
- Type
- Full time
- Compensation
- $150k-$200k
- Posted
- 2 days ago
Join a team building useful software. Work closely with engineering and design to turn new ideas into products.
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Job Description:
About Organization
The Quality and Standardization Division is a global, cross-functional organization
seeking individuals who continuously strive for improvement. The Quality Management Department defines Rakuten Symphony’s quality strategy and establishes the process standards that ensure every product is delivered with consistent quality, compliance, and customer readiness.
Within the department, the Product Governance team is the steward of the company’s product portfolio-60+ products across RAN, OSS, Cloud, and adjacent domains, deployed globally for a diverse customer base. We govern the New Product Initiation lifecycle, orchestrate portfolio-wide updates, and maintain a single source of truth for product information that is accurate, current, and trusted-supporting 3,000+ employees, customers, and partners worldwide.
This role offers high visibility across business and engineering, broad exposure to cutting-edge telecom and cloud products, and the opportunity to shape how products are governed and scaled globally.
Why We Hire
As Rakuten Symphony’s product and release footprint expands across telecom, cloud, and software, a complete, reliable, and always-current view of the product portfolio is becoming mission-critical.
We are strengthening Product Governance by hiring a project manager, with an eye for Product, who will own portfolio quality end-to-end-ensuring the portfolio remains accurate, auditable, and decision-ready-while also introducing AI-assisted automation to modernize how governance is executed at scale.
The core governance foundations are already in place. This role comes at the point where automation and portfolio visibility are being built out, offering a unique opportunity to shape the operating model, tools, and standards alongside key stakeholders.
Job Duties
Business Outline
Own and govern Rakuten Symphony’s product portfolio as the **quality gate** between **what we build/release** and **what we sell**, ensuring a reliable single view across telecom, cloud, and software.
Business Details
- Maintain portfolio accuracy, completeness, and stakeholder-ready visibility
- Validate portfolio updates using **release evidence** and required reviews
- Improve governance efficiency through **AI-assisted automation** (with controls)
Stakeholders
- Business Units / Product Management
- Engineering / Release Management
- Sales / Pre-sales
- Quality / Governance teams
- Leadership, partners (as needed)
Business Procedures (Cadence)
- Monthly: run portfolio cycle with BUs (verify → close gaps → publish)
- Weekly: pre-commit sales checks + sales governance update
- Ongoing: AI automation improvements;
Responsibilities
- Own portfolio accuracy + presentation
- Lead monthly portfolio verification and publication
- Ensure portfolio reporting works for leadership, Sales, partners
- Review sales opportunities before commitment (registration + review status)
- Build AI-assisted automation with change control
English Usage Situations
- English for cross-functional meetings, written updates, and reporting (Japanese welcome)
Work Environment
You will work in a small team within the Quality Management Department and report to the Product Governance lead. You will work daily with the colleagues who run Product Onboarding and Release Governance, and collaborate in English with team members across several countries.
Minimum Qualifications
- 8+ years of experience in release management, product operations, program/project management or a similar role in a telecom or technology company, including 3+ years in product-related work
- Working knowledge of the software development and release lifecycle (versioning, release documentation, version control)
- Experience driving open items to closure with stakeholders in other departments, without direct authority, through consistent follow-up
- Experience reporting to senior leadership
- Experience with Jira and spreadsheets (and collaboration tools such as SharePoint)
- Business-level English
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in a telecom product or engineering organization (network, cloud or software)
- Experience with product registries, release governance or change management
- Scripting experience (for example Python), or experience building tools together with developers
- Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools
- Experience in a regulated industry
- Conversational Japanese
Languages:
English (Overall - 3 - Advanced)