Group Product Manager

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; United States; Hybrid; USD 132,000 - 227,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401k matching

Paid time off

Volunteer Time Off

Job summary

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is seeking a Product Manager Lead to own the RCLON platform, defining strategy and roadmap for a data-intensive, multi-partner CLO solution. You will partner with Engineering, Sales, and Compliance to deliver scale, security, and strong reporting across loyalty programs.

The role requires extensive product leadership in payments-adjacent environments, with a focus on cross-functional execution and data-driven decision making.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of product management experience with ownership of complex B2B or platform products.
• Deep knowledge of card-linked offers, payments, loyalty, financial institutions, or card networks.
• Proven experience partnering closely with engineering teams on data-heavy, API-driven, or transactional systems.
• Strong analytical mindset with hands-on experience working with data, reporting, and metrics.
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams and make clear prioritization decisions.
• Comfort presenting to senior leadership, executives, and external partners.
• Product Management certification and/or BI tool experience a plus.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the RCLON platform.
• Act as the primary product liaison between RCLON and Rakuten Rewards Product organization; define scope and write clear PRDs.
• Collaborate with Engineering to define scope, sequencing, and delivery plans; balance partner needs and scale.
• Build relationships with Sales, Business Development, Operations, BI, and Compliance to meet needs.
• Drive data integrations, reporting tools, and analytics capabilities for internal and external stakeholders.
• Ensure platform scales reliably as offer volume and complexity grow.
• Own PCI, SOC 2 compliance and data privacy considerations with Security and Legal.

Skills

Platform product ownership

B2B / platform products

Data analytics

Stakeholder management

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Advanced degree or certifications preferred

Job description

Rakuten International Overview:

Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community. Rakuten is the most rewarding way to shop, giving millions of members Cash Back when they buy from their favorite brands. As a leading shopping platform, Rakuten partners with thousands of top brands across apparel, beauty and wellness, grocery, travel, on-demand services, subscriptions, and dining, helping members save on everyday purchases. Since 1999, Rakuten members have earned more than $4.6 billion in Cash Back, making it the largest Cash Back platform of its kind. Learn more at Rakuten.com.

The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment, and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Everyday team members deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork. Rakuten Rewards is a leading e-commerce company that enhances the way people shop by offering Cash Back, deals and rewards from more than 3,500 merchants. Founded in 1999, Rakuten has grown to become the go-to shopping destination for consumers, having paid out nearly $2 billion in Cash Back to its 15 million members. The company also operates ShopStyle, a leading fashion discovery destination, and Cartera Commerce, a top rewards platform for airlines and banks. For more information, visit www.rakuten.com.

Job Summary:

We are hiring a Product Manager Lead to serve as the single product owner for the Rakuten Card Linked Offers (RCLON) platform. This is a senior, highly visible role responsible for defining product strategy, owning the roadmap, and leading execution across a complex, multi-partner, data-intensive environment. RCLON is a market-leading CLO platform powering large-scale, high-performance offers for top loyalty programs across financial institutions, airlines, and consumer rewards platforms. Our platform supports best-in-class offer scale, transaction tracking, and partner reporting in a rapidly evolving and increasingly competitive ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities:

• Product Strategy & Ownership Own the end-to-end product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the RCLON platform, aligned to business objectives and revenue growth targets. Serve as the single accountable product owner for a multi-partner, multi-publisher platform operating at significant scale and complexity. Translate company and partner goals into clear product priorities, tradeoffs, and execution plans.
• Cross-Functional Leadership Act as the primary product liaison between RCLON and the broader Rakuten Rewards Product organization, ensuring alignment on standards, tooling, and best practices. Partner closely with Engineering to define scope, sequencing, and delivery plans; write clear, high-quality product requirements that balance partner needs, technical constraints, and platform scalability. Build strong working relationships with Sales, Business Development, Operations, BI, and Compliance to ensure the platform meets both internal and external needs.
• Platform, Data & Analytics Drive the evolution of data integrations, reporting tools, and analytics capabilities for internal stakeholders and external partners. Collaborate with BI teams to improve data accuracy, transparency, and self-service reporting across the platform. Ensure the platform scales reliably as offer volume, partners, and transaction complexity grow.
• Compliance, Risk & Reliability Own product accountability for PCI, SOC 2, and related compliance requirements, partnering with Engineering, Security, and Legal to ensure ongoing adherence. Ensure product decisions account for data privacy, security, and operational resilience in a payments-adjacent environment.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of product management experience, with ownership of complex B2B or platform products
• Deep domain knowledge of card-linked offers, payments, loyalty, financial institutions, or card networks
• Proven experience partnering closely with engineering teams on data-heavy, API-driven, or transactional systems
• Strong analytical mindset with hands-on experience working with data, reporting, and metrics
• Ability to manage multiple concurrent workstreams and make clear prioritization decisions
• Comfort presenting to senior leadership, executives, and external partners
• Exceptional communication, organization, and stakeholder management skills
• Product Management certification and/or BI tool experience a plus

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required
• Advanced degree or formal product certifications preferred but not required
• Experience in high-scale partner platforms or multi-tenant B2B products
• Familiarity with Agile product development and modern product discovery practices
• Experience working in regulated or compliance-heavy environments

Five Principles for Success:

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success. Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

Compensation and Benefits:

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements. USD $132,082.50 - $226,820.00 annually

The Consolidated Appropriations Act’s Transparency in Coverage Rules require group health plans to disclose on a public website information regarding in-network provider rates and historical out-of-network allowed amounts and billed charges for covered items and services in two separate machine-readable files (MRFs). The MRFs for Rakuten’s Aetna benefit plan are provided in the link below. Aetna Transparency in Coverage: Machine-Readable Files | Rakuten