Software Engineer

Recursive Shibuya-ku, Tokyo April 2 2026
  • 💴 No salary range given
  • 🏡
    Partially remote
  • 🗾 Japan residents only
  • 💬
    Basic Japanese
    Fluent English
  • 🧪
    Intermediate level
    Unspecified years of experience
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About Recursive

Recursive Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

Founded in 2020, Recursive is an AI consulting company based in Japan working with AI technology to develop innovative, sustainable solutions to the environmental and societal challenges the world faces today.

Key benefits

  • Have a positive impact on society
  • Join a growing startup
  • Work with a diverse team

About the position

Responsibilities

  • Prompt & Pipeline Engineering: Design and implement robust prompt-tuning and orchestration pipelines using frameworks like LangChain or LlamaIndex. This includes techniques such as prompt chaining, few-shot prompting, and developing autonomous agents.
  • Model Integration & Deployment: Integrate and deploy LLMs (both proprietary and open-source) into production environments. This involves managing API integrations, handling request/response schemas, and ensuring models are performant and cost-effective.
  • Data & Knowledge Systems: Design and build data pipelines for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. This includes creating vector stores, optimizing embedding strategies, and ensuring data is up-to-date and accessible for real-time model queries.
  • Backend & API Development: Develop and maintain high-performance, fault-tolerant backend services and APIs that serve as the core of our AI-centered applications.
  • Performance Benchmarking: Conduct quantitative analysis and A/B testing to benchmark the performance, latency, and cost of different LLM prompts and models, and iterate on solutions based on data-driven insights.
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Utilize cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure) to deploy, manage, and scale applications and their supporting infrastructure.
  • Collaborative Development: Work closely with frontend developers and product managers to integrate LLM-powered features seamlessly into the user experience and deliver value-driven solutions.

Requirements

  • Education and Experience: Hold a Bachelor’s degree, or 10 years of industry experience in a software development role
  • Programming Languages: Experience in at least one systems language (Python, Go, Java, C++, Rust, etc.)
  • Database Experience: Experience with database management and operations, including relational and NoSQL databases, and an understanding of vector databases.
  • Cloud Proficiency: Proficiency with setting up, deploying, operating, and maintaining applications with at least one major cloud provider, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure
  • Applied LLM Experience: Demonstrable experience in building and deploying at least one application powered by a large language model. This could include a personal project, a contribution to an open-source tool, or professional work.
  • Benchmarking and Performance: Familiarity with benchmarking and quantitative analysis methods to assess and optimize AI and application performance
  • Passion for the Field: Passionate about AI and how it applies in the present, and vision for how it will apply in the new future
  • Location and Visa: Must be currently residing in Japan with a valid visa
  • Language Ability: Proficient in English, able to discuss in depth technical topics in it; familiarity with Japanese (N3 or above) is a plus

Hiring Process

  1. 1

    First Interview

    With Hiring team.

  2. 2

    Pair Programming Interview

  3. 3

    Third Interview

    With Engineering team.

  4. 4

    Final Interview

    With Leadership.

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Meet Recursive's Developers

Xyza talks about working for Recursive, a Japan-based AI company with an exciting mission related to sustainability. She shares her journey, how they’ve supported her, and the company’s working culture.

Read their story...

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