Platform Engineer

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; United States; On-site; USD 79,000 - 134,000; Full time

Job summary

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is seeking an embedded AI engineer to help engineering squads adopt AI agent skills and use them daily to build better software, faster. You will also own core platform work including infrastructure, CI/CD, and quality engineering, ensuring reliable, well-tested systems.

You will be based in San Mateo, collaborating with your manager for mentorship and growth across our stack. You will work across the full stack (Java, Python, Golang, React) with a focus on implementing AI

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with LLMs and AI agents, and cloud AI services (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar on AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Experience building agentic systems: Agent Skills, MCP, and multi-agent workflows with LangChain/Agent SDK.
• Understanding AI fundamentals: model failures, grounding, and evaluation-driven development.
• Automation mindset and system design focus beyond writing code.

Responsibilities

• Act as embedded, forward-deployed AI engineer for AI tooling across squads.
• Design and integrate agentic AI systems into internal tools and workflows.
• Strengthen quality with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing using AI-generated coverage.
• Build back-end services, APIs, and front-end components across the stack (Java, Python, Golang, React).
• Design data schemas and databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Kafka) for efficient storage.

Skills

LLMs & AI agents

LangChain

Agent SDK

MCP

Cloud AI services

1–3 years product experience

Java/Python/Golang/React

CI/CD tooling

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Master's Degree Preferred

Tools

LangChain

Agent SDK

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Redis

Kafka

AWS/GCP/Azure

Job description

Job Summary

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. 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. You will help engineering squads adopt AI agent skills and use them daily to build better software, faster. You will act as their embedded expert, a forward-deployed engineer for AI agent skills, showing them how to use these tools, fixing issues, and closing gaps as they come up. Alongside that, you will also own core platform work: infrastructure, CI/CD, and quality engineering, keeping the systems squads depend on reliable and well-tested. You will be based in San Mateo, working closely with your manager for direct mentorship as you grow across our stack.

Key Responsibilities

• Acts as the embedded, forward-deployed engineer for AI tooling: finds slow or manual points in a squad's dev lifecycle, closes them with AI-powered solutions, and champions AI coding assistants and agents across the org.
• Designs and integrates agentic and multi-agent AI systems (LangChain, Agent SDK, MCP) and external AI services (Anthropic, OpenAI, and others) into internal tools and squad workflows.
• Strengthens quality through unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, using AI to generate and maintain coverage faster and resolve issues quickly.
• Builds back-end services, APIs, and lightweight front-end components across the team's stack (Java, Python, Golang, React), ensuring proper integration within existing infrastructure.
• Designs and manages data schemas and databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Kafka) for efficient storage and retrieval.
• Builds and improves CI/CD pipelines, deployment tooling, and internal developer platform capabilities (templates, self-service infra) that squads depend on.
• Acquires foundational knowledge of system engineering principles and practices relevant to assigned projects.
• Analyzes basic system requirements and participates in the preparation of technical specifications.
• Applies learned concepts to assist in system design and implementation for limited-scope projects.
• Communicates progress and findings to team members and stakeholders during project reviews.
• Coordinates with cross-functional teams to align tasks with project timelines and deliverables.
• Develops basic documentation to support system architecture and implementation processes.
• Escalates technical challenges or unresolved issues to senior engineers for guidance and resolution.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with LLMs and AI agents, and comfort with cloud AI services (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar on AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Practical experience building agentic systems: Agent Skills, MCP (Model Context Protocol), and multi-agent workflows using frameworks like LangChain or Agent SDK.
• A grasp of AI fundamentals: why models fail, hallucinations, grounding, and evaluation-driven development.
• An automation-first instinct and a system design mindset, reasoning about tradeoffs and not just writing code.
• 1–3 years building products end-to-end, from design through production deployment; strong, relevant internships also count.
• Solid programming fundamentals in at least one of Java, Python, Golang, or React, plus Git and collaborative development practices.
• Comfort working across the full stack rather than staying in one lane.
• Exposure to CI/CD tooling (e.g., GitHub Actions) and an interest in developer productivity/platform tooling.

Nice to Have

• Master's degree in AI/ML, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Experience with Docker/containers, Agent Skills, MCP, monitoring, or API frameworks like FastAPI.
• Hackathons, programming competitions, or personal projects building your own AI agents and automations.
• Please include your GitHub or portfolio so we can see what you've built.

Minimum Requirements

• 1–3 years relevant work experience
• Required 1–2 years of programming experience in at least one of Java, Python, Golang, or React
• Required Bachelor's Degree
• Required Master's Degree Preferred

Why You Should Apply

Works on real, open-ended problems, defining the approach and seeing solutions go live across the org. Gets direct visibility and mentorship from a senior engineering leader, with real influence on how the company adopts AI. Gains broad exposure across the stack and the business, at a leading global tech company.

Five Principles for 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

Equal Employment Opportunity

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 $79,200.00 - $133,540.00 annually