Senior Backend Engineer, Architect Department, Tokyo

Overview

The Architecture Department of the SMB Development Division, part of Money Forward Business Company, is dedicated to enhancing the flexibility and extensibility of our products, ensuring they withstand exponential growth, and improving our developer experience. 

Products we are working on include Cloud Accounting (クライド会計), Cloud Invoice (クラウド請求書), Cloud Tax Return (クラウド確定申告), and many more in our SMB Domain.

These products are designed to reduce administrative burdens, enhance efficiency, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, allowing sole proprietors and small-to-medium-sized businesses to focus on their core business activities and achieve greater success. 

We are looking for a backend engineer to join our team and be a part of our mission to provide our users with intuitive and user-friendly tools that adapt to their and our evolving needs. 

Responsibilities and Duties

• Participate and often lead in the architectural decoupling of a large Rails monolith using Packwerk; taking personal responsibility for the design of key components. 
• Provide thoughtful code review focused not just on Rails, but on the overall service architecture and future trade-offs. 
• Design clean internal interfaces within the monolith and architect the gradual extraction of some components to microservices using strategies such as strangler fig. 
• Contribute to reducing technical debt by improving overall separation of concerns and refactoring legacy code. 
• Move the engineering culture forward through active communication in sharing best practices and helping others improve.

Job Satisfaction and Experience Gained 

• Be a leader within an organization tasked with leading other engineers.
• Help others around you level up while simultaneously working closely with like-minded architects on the larger project. 
• Take charge of key aspects of a major project to re-architect a large monolith. 
• Tackle real-world distributed systems problems.

Required Skills and Experience

• 4+ years of experience architecting large-scale backend systems, including complex data modeling and system design using Rails or other MVC framework. 
• Experience designing and maintaining APIs (REST, gRPC, etc) and understanding of trade-offs involved in inter-service communication. 
• Experience with domain-driven design and establishing domain boundaries. 
• Exceptional RSpec skills, specifically focused on creating safety during large refactoring projects.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Practical experience with data duplication issues, synchronization, and eventual consistency across distributed services. 
• Practical experience using Packwerk or a similar tool to effect change in a large codebase.
• Comfortable working in a mixed culture & language (Japanese & English) organization with or without translation tools. 
• Experience in AI development and/or experience in using AI tools to improve development processes.
  • Money Forward recently announced our AI Strategy roadmap which focuses on improving AI-driven operational efficiencies, as well as integrating AI agents into our products to deliver better value to our users. (More information here)

Language Requirements

• Japanese Language Requirements:
  • Conversational (preferred)
• English Language Requirements: 
  • Business level 
    • OR
  • TOEIC score of 700 or above, plus the ability to handle meetings and text communication in English soon after joining. 

(Note: If you have other qualifications or experiences demonstrating English proficiency, such as EIKEN Pre-1, EIKEN 2nd Grade (CSE score 1950+), TOEFL iBT 60+, IELTS 5.0+, or Cambridge FCE.), feel free to discuss with us. For those without a TOEIC 700+ equivalent score, they will be asked to take a designated test during the interview process (generally after the first interview).

Expected Mindset

• A resilient hands-on architect who builds trust through technical safety, dissecting complex domains to establish good boundaries, and bringing order to overly-coupled domains.
• You balance a high-level vision for decoupling a monolith with the pragmatic empathy needed to iteratively move a cautious organization forward through steady, incremental improvements & technical diplomacy.

Technology Stack

• Web Server-side: Rails, Go, Kotlin 
• Database: MySQL 
• Middleware: Kubernetes, Nginx 
• Platform: Sakura Internet / AWS 

Tools Used

• Repository Management: GitHub 
• CI/CD: CircleCI, Github Actions, ArgoCD 
• Development Environment: Cloud-based Kubernetes for connected services; Local execution for own service. 
• Monitoring: DataDog, Rollbar 
• Communication: Slack, Notion 
• Security: Dependabot, Sonarqube

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.