Overview
Shiseido's Digital Division is seeking a permanent AI Consultant in Tokyo to design, build, and operationalize AI-driven solutions across our enterprise landscape. Sitting at the intersection of applied AI (LLMs, agents, MCP, automation) and enterprise integration, this role partners with functional teams, developers, and business stakeholders to identify AI use cases, prototype solutions, and deploy them into production in a secure, governed, enterprise-grade manner across Shiseido's SAP S/4HANA ecosystem and surrounding third-party platforms.
Role and Responsibility
- Identify and prioritize AI use cases across core business functions, including Finance, Supply Chain, Sales, Marketing, HR, and IT Ops.
- Design and build AI agents and assistants using modern frameworks (e.g., LangChain/LangGraph, Claude Agent SDK, OpenAI Agents SDK).
- Implement and integrate Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tools to securely expose enterprise systems and data to LLM-based agents.
- Design integrations connecting AI solutions with Shiseido's core landscape (SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP Solution Manager, MuleSoft, SAP PI/PO).
- Build RAG pipelines and knowledge assistants using enterprise data (documents, tickets, master data, transactional data).
- Establish standards and guardrails for enterprise AI: prompt management, evaluation, observability, cost control, data privacy, and responsible AI.
- Support MLOps / LLMOps, including model versioning, prompt/version control, monitoring, and refresh cycles.
- Coach and upskill internal teams (developers, functional consultants, power users) on AI tools and best practices while contributing to the AI roadmap and architecture.
Basic Requirement
- AI & GenAI: Strong hands-on experience with LLMs (Claude, GPT, Gemini); proven record building AI agents, multi-step tool-using workflows, and RAG pipelines (vector databases, embeddings, chunking); practical experience with MCP or tool-calling frameworks; expertise in Python (mandatory), prompt engineering, evaluation, and guardrails.
- Enterprise Integration: Strong understanding of enterprise integration patterns (connecting AI agents to SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, ServiceNow, MuleSoft, etc.); hands-on experience with REST/SOAP APIs, OData, OAuth2, JWT, webhooks, and API gateways; ability to design MCP-based connectivity across heterogeneous systems with structured and unstructured data.
- Engineering & Cloud: Cloud experience (Azure preferred, including Azure OpenAI / AI Foundry; AWS/GCP acceptable); proficiency with Docker, Git, CI/CD; awareness of security and compliance (PII handling, data residency, enterprise SSO, role-based access).
- Soft Skills & Language: Excellent written and verbal communication in English; strong stakeholder management and structured problem-solving skills to move from vague business requests to production-ready prototypes.
Preferred Requirement
- Japanese language skills.
- Experience deploying and managing local/self-hosted LLMs (Llama, Mistral, Qwen via Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, Hugging Face) for strict data residency scenarios.
- Experience with SAP Joule, SAP Business AI, or SAP AI Core / AI Launchpad.
- Experience with agent frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, Claude Agent SDK), voice/multimodal AI, or TypeScript / Node.js.
- Prior experience in the retail, beauty, or consumer goods industry.
- Professional certifications such as Azure AI Engineer or SAP BTP.
Position Attractiveness
- Enterprise AI at Scale: Direct opportunity to drive cutting-edge GenAI, agentic workflows, and MCP architectures into production within a global enterprise environment.
- High-Impact Strategic Role: Influence Shiseido's broader AI architecture and roadmap while directly interfacing with key business functions to shape high-value use cases.
- M odern Tech Stack Integration: Bridge state-of-the-art AI tooling with robust enterprise systems (SAP S/4HANA, Salesforce, ServiceNow) in a collaborative digital division.