We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead a high-performing team in our Tokyo office, working at the intersection of our Realtime and Personalization products (TypeScript, Kotlin). This is a pivotal moment for our platform: you will guide squads as they build AI-native components—developing true, industry-leading systems that empower marketers to build in new ways.
In this role you will be Realtime’s people leader for the Tokyo office as well as a delivery owner for squad-based projects. You will not only manage the careers of local engineers but also actively drive the execution of cross-functional squads. You will partner with Tech Leads to co-pilot projects, owning the “Who” and “When” of delivery while the Tech Lead owns the “What” and “How.”
Responsibilities
- Serve as the day-to-day management presence in Tokyo—ensuring team health and that their voice is heard, creating clarity, continuity, and support for the team even when they will work with peers outside of the Japan time zone.
- Assist in staffing cross-timezone full stack squads to meet the requirements of prioritized projects and ensure that the squad is optimized for delivering end-to-end.
- Work with technical leads and engineers directly to break down the roadmap and product requirements for delivery.
- Partner with the tech leads, TPM and PMs to drive project execution, taking joint ownership of the timeline, scope, and delivery milestones.
- Act as a primary owner of the agile process, ensuring a predictable shipping cadence for at least one cross-timezone squad and remove blockers so the squad can focus on execution and delivery.
- Champion our engineering culture. You will ensure our operating model scales effectively as we bridge the gap between Tokyo and Vancouver teams.
- Partner with cross-functional stakeholders in other regions—ensuring local team sustainability with departmental commitments and priorities.
- Promote an async-first model and ensure cross-timezone squads can operate sustainably.
- Join our on-call rotation as an escalation point to ensure the right engineer can be brought online if a PagerDuty alert is missed.
Requirements
- Experience working with highly distributed teams across significant time zone differences.
- You are comfortable with Japanese engineering culture and ready to apply modern Agile methodology.
- You communicate with nuance and respect while driving crisp decisions.
- 6+ years of backend engineering experience, with 3+ years in people management.
- You are a “person-first” leader who sets clear expectations and coaches with candor.
- Basic English (reading/writing) for global syncs
Nice to haves
While not specifically required, tell us if you have any of the following.
- Familiarity with our stack (TypeScript, Kotlin, Rails, AWS).
