Vice Senior Manager/Group Manager - Database Section, Cloud Services Department (CLSD)

Job Description:

Business Overview  
The Technology Platforms Division (TPD) drives the growth of Rakuten's ecosystem by delivering innovative, high-quality technology platforms characterized by integrated control and strategic partnerships.   
Within TPD, the Cloud Platform Supervisory Department (CPSD) develops and manages Rakuten's state-of-the-art cloud platform, empowering global scalability and accelerating innovation across its diverse business units.  

Department Overview 

The Cloud Services Department (CLSD) at Rakuten Group provides high-quality cloud infrastructure and platform services to application developers across Rakuten. Our mission is to enable secure, scalable, and efficient digital innovation. 

We deliver key domain services, including compute, storage, core infrastructure components, databases, container platform, observability, and gateway solutions, empowering Rakuten application teams to focus on their core business objectives. 

Position: 

Position Details

The Database Section designs, builds, develops, maintains, and supervises the database infrastructure, serving as the core database platform within Rakuten’s private cloud. We are dedicated to meeting all of Rakuten's data-related needs at scale, ensuring the high availability that our customers expect.

We are seeking a Manager for the Database Platform team. In this role, you will lead a multinational team responsible for the end-to-end lifecycle - from design and construction to development and maintenance - of the core database platform within Rakuten’s private cloud. You will lead the development of our database platform, optimize diverse database solutions, and drive the establishment of a de facto standard for database operations, while proactively managing vendor communications and negotiations to ensure maximum customer satisfaction.

- Lead and mentor a multinational team to oversee the development and stable operation of our core database platform

- Architect and optimize database solutions to enhance performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency across the ecosystem

- Manage large-scale database infrastructure projects, ensuring high availability and seamless integration with Rakuten’s private cloud services

- Conduct high-level vendor communication and negotiations to optimize infrastructure performance, licensing, and support

- Drive continuous improvement in database platform architecture to meet Rakuten's evolving, data-intensive needs

- Foster a culture of technical excellence, focusing on service quality and customer satisfaction

Mandatory Qualifications:

- More than 5 years of experience as a Database Administrator (DBA)

- More than 5 years of experience in a management or team lead position

- Strong English proficiency for cross-cultural team management and vendor negotiations

- Proven ability to manage complex projects and solve high-level technical/operational problems

- Excellent communication skills to coordinate with international stakeholders and vendors

Desired Qualifications: 

- Expertise in managing diverse database environments, including RDBMS (Oracle, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis, Couchbase, Cassandra)

- Experience in designing and operating large-scale database platforms within cloud or private cloud environments

#engineer #technologymanagement #technologyplatformdiv

Languages:

English (Overall - 3 - Advanced), Japanese (Overall - 3 - Advanced)