Fully Remote - No Japanese needed - Senior Data Engineer

Senior Data Engineer (Fully Remote)

Role Overview

A fast-growing travel tech company is building global products for hotels to streamline processes, improve efficiency, and drive sales growth. The data team maintains a modern platform that powers everything from internal business intelligence to advanced AI agents and recommendation engines.

The team is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to join a 5-person ML/Data/AI unit. You will work alongside two veteran Data Engineers to improve the data catalog, manage large-scale hospitality datasets, and architect the infrastructure that supports the next generation of AI-driven products.

Key Responsibilities

• Data Pipeline Development: Design, develop, and maintain robust batch and streaming pipelines using Apache Beam, Spark, and BigQuery.
• Platform & Catalog Initiatives: Work on data catalog and platform improvements to help humans and AI agents discover data and execute high-performance queries.
• Data Modeling: Improve models for critical data entities to ensure accuracy while optimizing compute costs.
• AI/ML Collaboration: Architect data features and pipelines that power recommendation engines and AI chatbot products.
• Infrastructure Support: Support ML/Data infrastructure and internal data usage across the organization.

Technical Stack

• Date Warehouse: BigQuery.
• Processing: Apache Beam (DataFlow), Spark, DuckDB.
• Orchestration & Transformation: dbt, Airflow, Prefect.
• Languages: Python, Scala, or Java.
• Cloud: GCS and AWS.

Qualifications

• Experience: Around 5+ years of combined experience in data engineering, data architecture, or software engineering.
• Educational/Professional Breadth: Open to diverse backgrounds, including Backend Engineering, DBA, or BI/Data Science. A prior Software Engineering background is a strong plus.
• Large-Scale Systems: Demonstrated experience developing data models and pipelines on a big data scale. Experience from large technology-driven environments (e.g., Rakuten, LINE Yahoo, Fast Retailing) is highly preferred.
• AWS Proficiency: Experience with AWS Glue and related data services is considered a strong indicator of success.
• Leadership: Proven ability to lead technical projects and communicate effectively with stakeholders.
• Language: Fluency in English.

Nice to Have:

• Experience supporting RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), context-aware AI, and agent orchestration.
• Understanding of embeddings, knowledge graphs, and vector databases.

Compensation & Work Style

• Salary: Up to 12M JPY (commensurate with experience).
• Work Style: Fully Remote.
• Team Culture: Work with engineers and product managers from diverse backgrounds trying to do unique and impactful work.

Interview Process

1. Initial Screen: 30-minute conversation with the Hiring Manager.
2. Assessment: Practical take-home assignment.
3. Technical Interview: Deep dive with the two current Data Engineers.
4. Final Interview: Final leadership review.