e are a small team behind some of the most popular language learning apps in Japan. We originally built iKnow!, a vocabulary learning tool which sees millions of study sessions a month. Now we are rebuilding the software behind DMM Eikaiwa, Japan's largest online English school. Our goal is to create a comprehensive language-learning platform, with adaptive vocabulary and grammar learning, live video lessons with teachers, guided skills practice and progress visualizations. It's a big task, and we are looking for people to help!
ur team is managed by engineers, who value avoiding meetings and any other unnecessary distractions. This includes making sure everyone has the best tools available, and also means making sure that people have the flexibility to work in the way that suits them best, so they can focus on building.
We are a small team (currently about twenty people), with members from all over the world. Communication within the team is primarily in English, although there are plenty of chances to speak Japanese as well! We believe in equality of opportunity, and value the diversity of our team in all its forms. There is always someone with a different perspective, which makes for an interesting place to work.
T
he team includes dedicated customer support, manual testing, and sysops specialists, so engineers and designers can focus on their primary jobs. As a small team, we all have a say in the products we make, and love discussing how to improve them together—everyone can feel the impact they have personally had on our products.
If you have heard the horror stories of working for big Japanese companies, don't worry, they don't apply to us. Instead, we offer a great work environment in the heart of Tokyo and the opportunity to build services that make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of language learners.
Benefits
W
e are a fully independent team working inside a large Japanese company. It’s an unusual arrangement, but it lets us offer many of the benefits of working at a startup, but with the stability and resources of being part of a larger organization. Some nice things include:
Flextime
work the hours and days that suit you
Remote Work
work remotely from Tokyo or overseas
when visiting home or friends
Great Equipment
high-end computers, big displays, and
adjustable standing desks
Modern Tools
use the software that makes you most productive
English
English-speaking working environment
Casual
no pointless dress codes
No Overtime
40 good hours beats 80 bad hours
No Wasted Time
no pointless meetings or paperwork
Modern Office
with amazing views of Tokyo Tower
For those moving to Japan to join us, we offer help relocating:
Full visa sponsorship and application assistance
Moving expenses and airfares
First two months accommodation, and help finding a place to live
Company provided guarantor for first rental contract
Assistance from a bilingual team member when registering at the city office, creating bank accounts, etc
Additionally as a full-time employee you are entitled to:
Commuting allowance
Company pension contributions
Company health insurance contributions
How to Apply
O
ur policy is to hire the best engineers, researchers, and other specialists we can find, regardless of their backgrounds. We aren't looking for candidates with X years of experience in particular technologies; we know good engineers/researchers can learn new skills and we hire with that in mind. On the team we do have people who work well in particular roles or with certain technology, but there is also a lot of fluidity and people always have the opportunity to work on something new.
We're interested in hiring a few more engineers. We know good engineers can come from many different backgrounds, so we don't require candidates to have expertise in any particular languages or technologies; just a deep understanding of computer science and software engineering principles. That said, experience in any of the following technologies would certainly be a plus:
WebRTC
React
Natural Language Processing
Machine Learning
Technology
We're building out a full language teaching platform based on modern technologies and engineering best practices. Our goal isn't to get something out the door ASAP, but to build a highly scalable, stable system which we can keep building on for years to come. Our current projects include:
A responsive single-page study app. It's written in TypeScript with React, has good test coverage, and a feature set surpassing most native apps.
A JSON-serving API using Ruby, Rails, and Postgres, with a focus on efficiency, data integrity, and testability.
A WebRTC video calling platform providing extremely high capacity and availability.
A suite of adaptive algorithms for optimizing user study efficiency.
A collaborative realtime web-based content editor to support our team of editors in producing the best learning resources possible.
Tools for supporting development, testing, and fast deploys. We have a high velocity, and much of it is thanks to our constant investment in better developer tools.
An autoscaling, self-healing, fully-automated AWS environment using Kubernetes.
We believe in open source and have made public many of the modules underpinning our technology stack. You can view our open source code on GitHub.
Interview Process
Please send your resume to jobs@iknow.jp Include any relevant experience and any questions you have about the job or the team. We will review and respond to all applications. If we feel you might be a good fit for our team, you'll start our interview process:
Initial Interview
A 30 minute interview with one or two of our engineers. We'll talk about your experiences, our team and projects, and answer any questions you might have.
We'd also like to talk tech with you; a great topic can be an interesting technical challenge or achievement you've had. Programming paradigms, frameworks, code design, and testing are great topics too.
At the end, we'll ask you to do a quick programming challenge via a collaborative coding tool CoderPad.
Coding Interview
Using Coderpad, we'll go through a series of programming questions together, ranging from algorithms to code design. This interview usually takes about 60-90 minutes.
Project
We'll ask you to complete a short project (less than a day's work) based on the work you'd be doing on our team. You may use whichever language and framework you like.
We'd like to see code that's suitable for a production system: written in a clean and consistent style, and well factored for adding new features. You'll commit to a private repository on our GitHub, our engineers will review it via pull request and leave feedback.
After the project we will quickly make a decision on whether to extend an offer or not.
In all positions, Japanese language proficiency is not a requirement, but a strong interest in language learning is highly desirable. Note, although we allow remote work, all open positions are based out of our Tokyo office, so we would expect people to be willing to relocate if they don't already live nearby.
Non-Tech Positions
We're looking for people with the following skills:
Project Management
Design
Technical Sales
Interview Process
Please send your resume to jobs@iknow.jp Include any relevant experience and any questions you have about the job or the team. We will review and respond to all applications. If we feel you might be a good fit for our team, you'll start our interview process:
Initial Interview
A 30-minute interview with members of the team, where we'll talk more about
your experience, the job, and answer any questions you might have. You'll get to
meet members of the team and we will talk shop a bit. The contents will vary
depending on the position, but the goal is to get a feel for your way of doing things,
and the sort of tasks you have confidence in.
Project Introduction
We'll ask you to complete a short project (less than a day's work) based on the
work you'd be doing on our team. We want to see your best work, showcasing
your creativity, attention to detail, and talent.
Project Review
Once you've finished the project and sent us the files, we'll take a look and discuss
it with the team. Then we'll ask you to walk us through the project, explain your process, and
respond to some feedback from the team.
After these three interviews, we'll decide if we'd like to extend you an offer to join our team.
