Lead Developer

Are you looking to join a diverse team of talented engineers and designers? Are you in your element with a full software development cycle?

We are looking for a Lead Developer to join our Japan office that has been officially certified as a Great Place to Work for the second year in a row! You will solve juicy digital challenges at scale, share expertise with others, and work closely with Reaktor communities in Lisbon, Helsinki, NYC and Amsterdam.

Reaktor is a creative digital product studio - designing and building tomorrow's digital product. Our Tokyo branch focuses on helping enterprises build digital services using a user-driven, agile approach. We work lean, and swear by prototypes and data, continuous iteration, humble curiosity, and small teams with big autonomy. Our creations cover a wide range of platforms and technologies, including mobile apps, web, IoT devices, VR, robots, and even satellites.

A typical day as a Lead Developer:

• Being the first point of contact for the client when it comes to technical questions or the quality of the delivery
• Working together with the client’s tech and business teams: facilitating collaboration between different stakeholders to ensure quality delivery
• Improving the team's ways of working by empowering them to discover optimal workflows and enabling a healthy work-life balance among team members
• Building relationships with the client to ensure future collaboration 
• Assisting the team in adopt and follow agile practices
• Implementing new features that require changes to front-end applications, back-end servers, and/or databases and even on infrastructure.
• Help the team to deliver high end results 
• Solve business critical issues together with your team and the client 
• Advice your team on how to achieve wanted results 

To thrive in this position, you’ll need: 

• Strong verbal communication skill and ability to communicate with multiple stakeholder groups both in English and Japanese.
• Experience on a broad spectrum (back end, front end, and ops). Usually, to be successful in this role at Reaktor, we've noticed it's good to have a minimum of eight years of relevant work experience.
• Solid understanding and experience of agile project management principles.
• To have both previous team-lead and consulting experience.
• Experience working with several client stakeholders to solve complex problems. 
• Previous experience with at least one common server-side programming language. Currently, many of our projects are built with TypeScript/JavaScript and Node.js. But, Java/Scala/Kotlin, Clojure, and Python are also used.
• Strong knowledge of at least one common client-side language and framework. We often use TypeScript/JavaScript and React on our web app projects and Swift, Java/Scala/Kotlin, or TypeScript/JavaScript React-native on mobile.
• Relevant skills to create new backend services and tweak CI/CD pipelines when the project requires.
• Know-how on databases (e.g., PostgreSQL).
• To be willing to work in a hybrid set up, where you work with your team at the office or at the client premises.

While working at Reaktor, we’ll provide you with: 

• To be able to impact how you work. Together with the client, your team chooses the approach, technologies, and methodologies you think will work best in any given situation.
• A community with as much support as your heart desires
• A team that’s not only experienced but considerate as well. Your coworkers are likely as experienced as you are, and they all want you to succeed.
• A sustainable work-life balance and support for your daily life outside of work.

We really care about our employees and offer:

• 20 Annual Paid Holidays 
• Bi-annual company trip 
• Company Sponsored Team Building Outings and Events  
• Paid On-boarding Trip to Finland 
• Paid Cellular Phone and Data Plan 
• Free Company Swag
• Endless Snacks and Drinks   
• Casual Dress Code 
• Support For Career and Development Growth 
• One Month of Sick Leave Per Year  
• Support for Family Situations Including Parental Leave and Working Flexibility
• Specialty coffee from micro-roasters throughout Japan 
• Freedom to choose and expense own working tools, including keyboards, mouse, and laptop stands   

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Together, we are committed to making Reaktor an environment that embraces and values all of our employees for the whole of who they are. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply, knowing that studies show that members of underrepresented communities don’t apply for jobs unless they fully satisfy all of the requirements. If you're thinking twice about applying for this reason, we invite you to send us your application anyway. You could be just the person we're looking for.

Read more about our DEI work here.

Interested? Drop us a line via the form below. We'll be happy to hear from you!

Steps after submitting your application:

  Brief chat to say "Hi!"

  Introduction to Reaktor. We call this the Attitude  round. Check out what Adam had to say about our interview and see what our colleague has to say about her journey at Reaktor Japan so far.

  Technical Round. 

💻  Consulting and Team Work Exercise.

  Final Round. We take this opportunity to clarify our mutual expectations

If you believe you are the person we’re looking for, introduce yourself. Tell us your story and what you want to accomplish. Details of any open source projects and your GitHub repository are highly regarded. Drop us a line at about why you’re a perfect fit for this position, and include your CV along with few samples of your work.

P.S. Listen to our new podcast Fork Pull Merge Push.
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