Director of AI Engineering & Research

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 143,000 - 267,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401k matching

Paid time off

Volunteer Time Off

Other employee benefits

Job summary

Rakuten Group, Inc. is seeking a Director, Engineering and Research within Rakuten Americas’ AI & Data Division (AIDD). The role bridges cutting-edge research with scalable engineering, delivering AI solutions across agent experiences, search, recommendations, and personalization for billions of users.

You will guide multi-year roadmaps and lead interdisciplinary teams to production-ready systems. You will partner with executive stakeholders, manage budgets, and foster a culture of innovation,

Qualifications

• Expert in leading multi-year technical and research roadmaps.
• Proven ability to scale interdisciplinary engineering and research teams.
• Deep cloud-native systems experience with security and reliability.
• Strong track record translating AI/ML research into production systems.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year roadmaps aligning research with engineering execution.
• Lead cross-functional teams across Research, Product, and Operations.
• Drive performance, budgeting, and resource planning.
• Foster collaboration between research and engineering.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Cross-functional leadership

Cloud-native architectures

AI/ML expertise

Stakeholder management

People management

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Engineering

Master's or Ph.D. preferred

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Distributed systems

Job description

Rakuten Group, Inc. is seeking a Director, Engineering and Research within Rakuten Americas’ AI & Data Division (AIDD). The role bridges cutting-edge research with scalable engineering, delivering AI solutions across agent experiences, search, recommendations, and personalization for billions of users.

You will guide multi-year roadmaps and lead interdisciplinary teams to production-ready systems. You will partner with executive stakeholders, manage budgets, and foster a culture of innovation,