Engineering Manager / EM - Application
About the position
We're looking for an engineering manager to lead one of the application development teams within the ProOne Development Department 1. You'll own both the people and technical sides of your team — this is not a pure management role, and not a pure IC role. You'll be deeply involved in technical decisions, system design, and code review, while also growing your team members, running sprints, and collaborating with product, design, and QA to ship features for some of Japan's largest enterprise customers.
Work breakdown (approximate)
- Technical judgment, system design, and code review: ~40%
- People management (1:1s, performance reviews, career development, hiring): ~40%
- Hands-on implementation: ~20%
These proportions are not fixed — as your team matures, you can delegate more and shift the balance.
What you'll do
- Lead an application development team of 4–7 engineers, owning delivery and team health.
- Drive technical direction for your team's product area — architecture decisions, design reviews, and code quality standards.
- Run agile sprints: planning, estimation, retrospectives, and continuous improvement of team processes.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with Product Managers, Designers, QA, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into well-scoped engineering work.
- Conduct regular 1:1s, provide feedback, run performance reviews, and support the career growth of each team member. Own day-to-day people operations for your team, including attendance and leave management.
- Participate in hiring — resume screening, interviews, and onboarding of new engineers.
- Contribute to department-wide engineering initiatives: improving development workflows, how AI is used, coding standards and tooling.
- Participate in support rotations to investigate bugs and incidents.
Our Tech Stack
Not exhaustive - the most important are:
- TypeScript;
- Node.js;
- NestJS / Prisma / PostgreSQL on the backend;
- React / Next.js on the frontend, React Native (Expo) on mobile; and
- AWS (EKS, S3, Lambda); and
- Redis.
How we use AI in development
We are bullish on AI as a development tool, and provide free usage of AI tools like Claude Code for our engineers. We have an internal AI task force responsible for policy, guidelines, oversight, and technology in order to empower our engineers to use AI safely and efficiently.
Requirements
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a meaningful portion in web application development.
- 2+ years of experience leading or managing an engineering team (team lead, tech lead with people responsibilities, or engineering manager).
- Hands-on experience with TypeScript and at least one modern frontend framework (React strongly preferred).
- Strong understanding of backend development, database modeling, and API design.
- Experience running agile/scrum processes and delivering iteratively.
- Track record of growing engineers — mentoring, conducting 1:1s, giving feedback, and supporting career development.
- Proficiency collaborating across functions (product, design, QA, operations, and business stakeholders).
- Be located in, or be willing to relocate to, Japan (we will support relocation).
Nice to haves
While not specifically required, tell us if you have any of the following.
- Experience with our specific stack: NestJS, Prisma, AWS.
- Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS or GCP).
- Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows (e.g. Claude Code).
- Experience building B2B or enterprise SaaS products.
- Conversational-level Japanese.
What makes this role compelling
- Management and technical, not one or the other. About half your time is design, review, and technical direction. You stay close to the code while growing as a leader.
- A diverse team of strong engineers. Engineers from 12+ countries bring diverse perspectives and skills.
- High-growth, real-world impact. ProOne is a vertical SaaS product growing rapidly in Japan's service industry. Your team's work directly impacts how thousands of businesses operate daily.
Compensation
¥7,500,000 ~ ¥10,400,000 annually.
Required Skills
Required Languages
🇬🇧 English, 🇯🇵 Japanese