Senior QA Manager (HR Product Development Division), Tokyo

Overview

Money Forward is entering a new era of growth. As we scale our HR domain, which includes mission-critical products like Money Forward Cloud Payroll, Human Resources Management, and Money Forward Cloud My Number, the complexity of aligning product requirements with ever-changing Japanese labor laws and regulations has increased exponentially.

Since then, we have expanded our product lineup and now offer eight products in the HR domain.

• Money Forward Cloud Payroll
• Money Forward Cloud Human Resources Management
• Money Forward Cloud Attendance
• Money Forward Cloud Attendance Plus
• Money Forward Cloud Year-End Adjustment
• Money Forward Cloud Social Insurance
• Money Forward Cloud My Number
• MoneyForward Cloud Employee Benefits Rental

The HR domain has high potential for market share expansion, so it has been identified as a key area to accelerate business growth. As the number of product users increases and the organisation expands, improving product quality has become an urgent priority.

We are looking for a visionary QA Manager to lead our Quality Assurance strategy into an AI-first future. This role isn’t just about finding bugs; it’s about architecting a quality ecosystem where AI acts as a force multiplier— automating regulatory cross-checks, optimizing the discovery phase, and ensuring our HR suite remains the most trusted in the market.

The Mission:

• AI-Driven Regulatory Alignment: Lead the implementation of AI tools to automatically cross-verify product requirements against legal regulations, ensuring 100% compliance with zero manual overhead.
• Full-Lifecycle AI Integration: Move beyond "test cases." You will integrate AI into the overall development cycle to improve quality. For example, in Discovery Phase, to identify quality risks before development begins and use AI to audit upstream documentation..
• Global Quality Leadership: Manage a diverse QA organization (Japan, Vietnam, India) and foster a culture of "Shift-Left" where Engineers and QAs partner with AI agents, focusing human judgment on strategy, exploratory testing, and high-risk validation.

Current Issues

Current Issues & Strategic Pivot:

Money Forward’s FY28 goal is to achieve sales of over 100 billion yen. To reach this milestone, our HR Product Development Department must maintain an aggressive release cadence while navigating the extreme complexity of Japanese labor laws and global expansion.

The Complexity Wall: Currently, our QA efforts rely on high-touch manual processes. With 8+ products and a global engineering team (Japan, Vietnam, India), we have reached a "complexity wall" where:

• Regulatory Bottlenecks: Manually cross-checking product requirements against evolving HR regulations is becoming a primary cause of lead-time inflation.
• Discovery Phase Gaps: Without AI-assisted auditing in the upstream discovery phase, quality issues are often identified too late, leading to expensive rework.
• Scaling Traditional QA: Simply adding more headcount is no longer a sustainable way to maintain quality at our current growth rate.

The Solution: We are shifting from a traditional domain-knowledge-heavy QA model to an AI-Augmented Quality Strategy. We need a leader who can move beyond manual process improvement and implement AI systems that act as an automated "regulatory brain" and "discovery-phase auditor." This role is critical to ensuring that our quality foundation is not just stable, but self-scaling through technology.

Main Responsibilities

• AI Strategy & Execution: Formulate and execute a QA strategy centered on AI-enabled processes. Specifically, building frameworks where AI audits requirements against regulatory benchmarks.
• Upstream Quality (Shift-Left): Implement AI-driven "Quality Gates" in the discovery and design phases to prevent defects from reaching the coding stage.
• Organizational Management: Lead and grow a high-performing QA team (5+ members), focusing on upskilling traditional QA engineers into AI-savvy Quality Analysts.
• Metrics & Intelligence: Utilize AI to analyze defect data, predicting potential failure points and recommending process improvements based on historical trends.
• Stakeholder Negotiation: Collaborate with Product Managers and Engineering Leads to integrate AI-driven quality checks into the standard SDLC without sacrificing velocity.
• Data Privacy & Security QA: Lead PII handling validation, APPI compliance testing, and ensure AI components do not leak or memorize employee data. Establish guardrails for LLM-based features that touch payroll, attendance, or personnel records.

Required Skills and Experience

• 3+ years of Organizational Management: Proven experience managing teams of 5 or more in a fast-paced environment.
• AI Product QA Expertise: Hands-on experience using LLMs or AI tools to analyze requirements, generate documentation, or perform automated compliance checks.
• Strategic QCD Awareness: Deep understanding of Quality, Cost, and Delivery, with the ability to show how AI improves all three.
• Upstream Process Design: Experience in standardizing development processes, specifically focusing on "Discovery Phase" quality assurance.
• Technical Foundation: 3+ years of development experience or advanced test automation (scripting languages).
• Bachelor's degree in information processing or computer science, or equivalent knowledge (Basic Information Technology Examination, etc.)

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience in establishing a QA organisation from scratch
• Experience in improving QA approaches using AI tools or experience in AI development
• Experience working in a global environment spanning multiple countries (in the HR Product Development Department, you will work with members from Vietnam and India)
• Experience in introducing, building, and maintaining CI/CD environments and test automation using automation frameworks
• A sense of responsibility to commit to product quality and the perseverance to see things through even in difficult situations
• Those interested in a new era of QA strategy centered on shift left

Language Requirements

• Japanese language skills: Not required
• English language skills: Business level (TOEIC 700 points or equivalent)
  • For meetings conducted in Japanese, an interpreter will be provided.

Technology Stack

• Backend: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, GraphQL, gRPC, Sidekiq Pro, RSpec, Kotlin
• Frontend: TypeScript, Next.js, Vue.js, Nuxt.js, Bootstrap-vue, Vue apollo, Jest
• Infrastructure: Amazon EKS, Aurora, ElastiCache, S3 etc
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform
• Test Automation Tech stack: Playwright with Typescript

Work Environment

At Money Forward, we provide an environment where we can create world-class services together, and we are looking forward to welcoming you.

• Provided PC Specs: We provide PCs equipped with the latest CPUs (MacOS or Windows). Custom-made PCs tailored to business requirements and replacements with the latest OS are also possible.
• Systems to Enhance the Development Environment: Peripheral devices necessary for work (such as displays, mice, keyboards) can be purchased as office supplies. Generally, you can choose from standard products (catalog), and if conditions are met, you can apply for non-standard products as well.
• Money Forward Library: We have a library system where you can freely borrow books, ranging from technical books to management books. Desired books can be purchased at the company's expense.
• Referral Driven: We cover the cost of recruitment meals. There is a referral reward system.
• Conference Participation Support: The company partially covers participation in domestic and international conferences, such as RubyKaigi and Google I/O."