Technical Lead, Platform Engineering

About Us

Mercari is a Japan-based C2C marketplace company founded in 2013 with the mission to "Create value in a global marketplace where anyone can buy & sell." From being the first tech unicorn from Japan before its IPO in 2018, we have come a long way towards becoming a global player and continuously and diligently work towards our transformation journey with a strong focus on our mission.

Since its inception, Mercari Group has worked to grow its services, investing in both our people and technology. Over time Mercari has expanded from being the top player in the C2C marketplace in Japan to new geographies like the U.S. We have also successfully launched new businesses such as Merpay, a mobile payment service platform with a vision to create a society where anyone can realize their dreams through a new ecosystem centered not only on payment service but also on credit. Today, Mercari Group is made up of multiple subsidiary businesses including logistics, B2C platform, blockchain, and sports team management.

For our services to be utilized by people worldwide, there is still a mountain of work ahead of us. This endeavor naturally requires the capability of the best talent and minds, and that is exactly the reason for us to launch the India Center of Excellence. With your help, we will continue to take on the world stage and strive to grow into a successful global tech company.
Our Culture

To achieve our mission at Mercari, our organization and each of our employees share the same values and perspectives. Our individual guidelines for action are defined by our four values: Go Bold, All for One, Be a Pro and Move Fast. Our organization is also shaped by our four foundations: Sustainability, Diversity & Inclusion, Trust & Openness, and Well-being for Performance. Regardless of how big Mercari gets, the culture will remain essential to achieving our mission and something we want to preserve throughout our organization. We invite you to read the Mercari Culture Doc which summarizes the behaviors and mindset shared by Mercari and its employees. We continue to build an environment where all of our members of diverse backgrounds are accepted and recognized, and where they can thrive while holding dear to Mercari’s culture.

Organization/Team Mission

Mercari Engineering Principles

Mercari Engineering Principles are a shared understanding that serves as the foundation of engineering beliefs and behavior at Mercari. The Engineering Principles are designed to complement the organizational identity (Mercari's mission, values, and culture) from an engineering viewpoint.

These principles ultimately help us achieve Mercari's mission by defining the ideal state we seek to realize in the long term.

• Passion For The Product
• Grow Together
• Solve Through Mechanisms
• Collaborate Openly

Role

We’re looking for a Tech Lead with a strong computer science background and proven experience building and operating platform or infrastructure systems. You’ll provide technical leadership for platform initiatives while remaining hands-on, improving developer productivity and ensuring the reliability, security, scalability, and observability of Mercari services.

You’ll work with engineers and stakeholders across teams to identify problems, set technical direction, and deliver platform capabilities that support large-scale systems. You’ll also guide the release, migration, adoption, and operation of those capabilities.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design, development, and operation of platform features and tools that support the full software development lifecycle, from build and test through deployment and operation.
• Set technical direction for platform initiatives, make pragmatic architectural decisions, and communicate trade-offs clearly.
• Write and review production code, design documents, and infrastructure changes while maintaining high engineering standards.
• Plan and lead migrations and adoption of platform features and tools, working with internal developers to minimize disruption.
• Improve platform stability, scalability, availability, and security in collaboration with the SRE and Security teams.
• Improve observability of services and the platform to reduce incidents and control costs.
• Improve and automate daily platform operations, reducing toil, and guide incident response and follow-up improvements.
• Mentor engineers, share knowledge, and foster engineering best practices through technical guidance and collaboration.
• Work with internal developers and stakeholders to understand their needs, prioritize problems, and deliver practical solutions.

You may be a good fit if you

• Are passionate about improving developer productivity and experience.
• Enjoy building, operating, and maintaining scalable infrastructure through operational automation.
• Lead by example and enjoy mentoring engineers and helping teams make sound technical decisions.
• Take a pragmatic approach to problems and are neutral about technology choices.
• Avoid reinventing the wheel and make effective use of existing tools and ecosystems.
• Have strong communication and interpersonal skills and can align stakeholders across teams.

Platform areas

• ETI
• Network
• Platform Infra
• Observability

Bold challenges

The platform and its tools are used across the Japan marketplace, Japan fintech, and the Mercari US marketplace. Changes and improvements can affect organizational performance—from development agility to system reliability—and your work can have a significant impact.

The team needs to understand developers’ challenges and the needs of Mercari Group product development. As a lead engineer, you’ll help gather requirements, prioritize problems, and guide practical solutions that draw on your knowledge and experience.

Requirements

Minimum requirements

• At least 8 years of experience developing, operating, and maintaining complex, scalable production systems, including cloud-based platforms.
• Experience leading the technical design and delivery of platform or infrastructure initiatives across teams.
• Strong computer science background and in-depth knowledge of a major cloud platform such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Strong written communication skills for documenting designs, explaining technical trade-offs, and collaborating with stakeholders.
• Proficiency with container platforms such as Kubernetes or Docker in production environments.
• Hands-on experience building tools and automation with languages such as Bash, Go, or Python.
• Strong experience implementing and managing infrastructure as code (IaC), such as Terraform.
• Experience mentoring engineers and providing technical guidance through design and code reviews.
• Ability to collaborate with a team and adapt to a dynamic environment.

Preferred requirements

• Experience with distributed systems or microservices architecture.
• Understanding of service-level agreements (SLAs) and objectives for maintaining system performance and reliability.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability technologies such as Datadog, Prometheus, Graphite, Grafana, Kibana, or Elasticsearch.
• Previous open-source software development experience or active participation in open-source communities.
• Production experience with service meshes such as Istio, Kong, or Linkerd.

Benefits

Employment Status : Full-time

Office location: Bengaluru

Hybrid workstyle : 2 Days Work From Office

(We believe in high performance and professionalism. We work from office for 2 days/week and work from home 3 days/week

To build a strong & highly-engaged organization in India, we highly encourage everyone to work from our Bangalore office, especially during the initial office setup phase

We will continue to review and update the policy to address future organizational needs)

Working Conditions

• Employment Status: Full-time
• Office: Bangalore
• Hybrid workstyle
• We believe in high performance and professionalism. We work from the office for 2 days/week and work from home 3 days/week.
• To build a strong & highly-engaged organization in India, we highly encourage everyone to work from our Bangalore office, especially during the initial office setup phase
• We will continue to review and update the policy to address future organizational needs

Media

Owned Media

• Mercari Engineering Portal
• Mercari Engineering Blog: Backend
• Mercan, introduces the people that make Mercari

Related Articles

• Mercari Careers
• Culture Doc, the internal document that summarizes the behaviors and mindset shared by Mercari and its members