Senior Engineering Manager

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.

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 three values: Go Bold, All for One, and 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.

As a Senior Manager / Manager of Managers, you will own the engineering leadership layer for a department or multi-team charter - leading Engineering Managers (and through them, engineers) to deliver on Mercari's mission at scale. You will operate one level removed from day-to-day team execution, focusing on org design, leadership development, and cross-functional strategy.

The main components of the role are as follows:

• Leading, coaching, and developing a team of Engineering Managers: including their own people-management practice (recruiting, goal-setting, evaluation, and feedback for their reports)
• Owning organizational design for your department: team topology, span of control, role clarity, and scaling plans as headcount and scope grow
• Setting and driving multi-quarter engineering strategy in partnership with Product, Design, and other functional leaders
• Building and operationalizing a leadership pipeline — identifying and growing future EMs and tech leads from within the org
• Holding the department accountable for delivery, quality, and operational health (SLOs/SLAs, incident response, technical debt posture) across multiple teams
• Driving budget, and resourcing decisions for your part of the organization
• Representing engineering in senior cross-functional and leadership forums, including with stakeholders outside India
• Identifying and resolving systemic organizational issues (process, communication, culture) that span multiple teams.
• Planning and sponsoring department-wide initiatives and events that deepen technical expertise and organizational cohesion

We are looking for people who believe in our services, mission, and values, and who want to work where engineers can go bold, use the latest technology and take on challenges at a rapid pace. People with the enthusiasm, empathy, and seniority to lead and develop other leaders - not just individual teams.

• Shared understanding of and belief in Mercari Group's mission and values
• 15+ years of overall experience in software development and engineering leadership
• At least 4+ years of experience managing managers (Engineering Managers / Team Leads), in addition to direct engineering people management experience
• Track record of building, scaling, and restructuring engineering organizations (20+ engineers across multiple teams)
• Demonstrated experience setting multi-team / multi-quarter technical and organizational strategy
• Strong stakeholder management experience with senior leadership, Product, and cross-functional partners
• Experience developing and operating large-scale, high-traffic consumer products
• Strong track record of identifying, hiring, and developing engineering leadership talent

• Experience with making strong technical judgements of a system or platform at an organizational level
• Experience managing a multicultural, distributed, or globally dispersed engineering organization
• Experience hiring and building out a leadership bench (EM and tech lead hiring, interview process design, leadership branding)
• Strong experience in one or more of the following domains, at an operational/strategic level:
• Backend: Backend systems and platforms using Go or Java or any Backend Language
• Machine Learning: Familiarity to integrating with large-scale ML systems
• Data Engineering: Large-scale data systems /BI architecture on cloud platforms, and BI tooling (Looker, Tableau, PowerBI)
• Familiarity with databases (RDBMS/NoSQL), networks, Linux, monitoring, logging, and SLO/SLA frameworks at scale
• Experience with microservices architecture in production at scale
• Cloud development and platform strategy experience (preferably GCP or AWS)
• Understanding of UI/UX development practices
• OSS contribution experience or familiarity with the OSS community
• Prior P&L, budget ownership, or business-impact accountability for an engineering org

Employment Status: Full-time

Office Location : Bangalore

Hybrid workstyle

• 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

Work Hours

• Full flextime (no core time)
  Flexible to choose working hours other than team common meetings

Owned Media

• Mercari Engineering Portal
• Mercan - Introduces the people that make Mercari
• Mercari US Blog

Related Articles

• Development Platforms and Platformers: On Rising to the Global Standard Ken Wakasa, Mercari CTO | mercan
• “I'm Not a Talented Engineer” Insists the Member-Turned-Manager Revamping Our Internal CS Tool | mercan
• Personalize to globalize:How Mercari is reshaping their app, their company, and the world | mercan
• The Providers of the Safe and Secure Mercari Experience: The TnS Team, Introduced by Its Members! | mercan