AI Product Manager - Customer Strategy Department, Platform Strategy Supervisory Department (PFSD)

Rakuten Group, headquartered in Japan, serves approximately 100 million customers domestically and operates in 30 countries globally. We provide 70+ services across e-commerce, payments, financial services, telecommunications, media, and sports.

We are hiring an AI Product Manager for the Platform Strategy Supervisory Department (PFSD), a corporate organization reporting to top management (COO/Vice Chairman office). PFSD is responsible for group-wide customer strategy and ecosystem growth initiatives, rather than operating any single service.

In this role, you will leverage Rakuten’s core platform assets-Points, Coupons, Brand, and customer data-together with AI (machine learning, generative AI, and agent-like experiences) to build and scale products that deliver both customer value and business impact.

*Corporate organization: cross-functional teams such as Corporate Planning, CEO Office, HR, General Affairs, Finance/Accounting, and Legal.

Key Features of the Platform Strategy Supervisory Department

1. Discipline as a Professional Team: "5C"

The Platform Strategy Supervisory Department Administration & Organization Section values five key principles as a professional team. By leveraging Rakuten's vast assets, the department aims to make a significant social impact and enhance customer satisfaction. The team fosters a culture of enjoying challenges, even in situations of high uncertainty.

• Challenge to innovate
• Customer-oriented
• Concept-driven
• Cross-functional
• Commitment to results

1. Intentionality

• We prioritize delivering results through contributions to society, customers, colleagues, and stakeholders, fostering a culture that supports each other's growth and challenges.
• Department Recruitment Site (Job Descriptions, Member Interviews, etc.)
• https://corp.rakuten.co.jp/careers/division/customer_strategy/ (opens in new window)

Position

Why We Hire

We are expanding the team to accelerate AI product creation and growth-bringing Points/Coupons/Brand/Data to the next stage through machine learning, generative AI, and agent-like experiences.

Mission

• Do not “add AI for AI’s sake.” Determine whether AI is the best solution and continuously deliver outcomes through data, experimentation, and operational excellence.
• Leverage Rakuten’s core assets across services to achieve both customer experience value (fun, confidence, convenience) and business KPIs (usage, customer development, revenue, program effectiveness, etc.).

Attractiveness

• Leverage Rakuten's massive platform assets (points/coupons/brands/data) to drive high-impact AI products across the group.
• Drive products end-to-end with ownership, from hypothesis design to requirement definition, development promotion, verification, and improvement.
• Design scalable operations (Trust/Quality/Governance) in high-uncertainty domains, making data- and experiment-driven decisions.

Position Details

Strategy & Planning

• Structure ambiguous problems and decide the best approach (AI vs. non-AI), including preventing “over-AI” solutions.
• Define value hypotheses, target experiences, and KPI trees (business KPIs + AI metrics).
• Create AI PRDs clarifying use cases, constraints, risks, operational assumptions, and guardrails.

Delivery & Execution

• Own assigned AI product/features end-to-end: requirements, delivery direction, launch, and continuous improvement.
• Define data requirements (necessary datasets, logging/measurement design, labels, gaps and quality issues) and drive execution with cross-functional teams (Data Science/ML Engineering/Backend/UX, etc.).
• Operate an iteration loop based on A/B tests and online evaluation; make decisions and improve continuously.

KPI Design & Impact Measurement

• Take responsibility for key business outcomes (e.g., usage, engagement, CVR, program effectiveness, LTV).
• Define and monitor AI proxy metrics (e.g., precision/recall, ranking metrics, task completion rate, hallucination rate) and manage performance degradation.
• Clarify ROI and next actions based on experiments, quasi-experiments, and log analysis.

Trust & Responsible AI (Baseline)

• Embed privacy, security, compliance, prohibited cases, quality testing, and rollback plans into product design.
• Design for continuous updates and operations (monitoring, alerts, re-evaluation).

Stakeholder Management

• Align with stakeholders across business, marketing, UX, engineering, legal, and security; manage progress, key issues, and risks.
• Prepare recommendations, evidence, mitigation plans, and next actions to move decisions forward.

Example Product Concepts

• Personalized optimization of points/coupons (optimizing the entire experience from presentation to issuance and redemption).
• Smart agent transformation of services like PointClub (proposing/promoting optimal point experiences, procedural support, self-service inquiry resolution)
• Expanding brand asset experiences (e.g., Shopping Panda) through generative AI (crossing online/offline channels).
• Advanced marketing/offer decision-making products leveraging group-wide data.

Work Environment

Platform Strategy Supervisory Department consists of approximately 70 members with a roughly balanced gender ratio. The average age is in the early 30s. More than half of the team members have joined Rakuten mid-career, and the organization has a strong onboarding and support environment for experienced hires.

Team members come from diverse professional backgrounds, including strategy consulting, IT, platform businesses, startups, telecommunications, and content/media operations, creating a highly cross-functional and collaborative culture.

*We offer a flex-time system (with core hours), enabling flexible work styles.

Mandatory Qualifications

• Experience owning products with responsibility for business KPIs (revenue and/or customer satisfaction).
• Product management or director experience for large-scale web/app or platform products.
• Hands-on experience with requirements definition, delivery direction, and post-launch iteration with engineering/creative teams.
• Strong data-driven decision making (A/B testing, measurement design, and trade-off decisions).
• Foundational understanding of ML and/or generative AI (data dependency, probabilistic behavior, and operational degradation).
• The ability to create products with a sense of urgency in uncertain environments.
• The ability to integrate diverse perspectives (UX/Creative/Marketing/Business/Development) into unified thinking.
• Ability to execute in uncertainty with speed, and synthesize across UX, creative, marketing, business, and engineering.
• Problem-solving skills, drive, initiative.
• Work experience in English.
• Native Japanese skills.
• Submission of Japanese Resume.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with personalization/recommendation/optimization or agent-like generative AI products.
• Experience collaborating with ML Ops/Data Ops and data governance for scalable operations.
• Experience with Responsible AI (privacy, security, bias, explainability).
• Experience leading and mentoring team members (No formal management experience required).

Other Information

Additional information on Location

Rakuten Crimson House: Futako-Tamagawa

Related Pages

• Employee Benefits: https://global.rakuten.com/corp/careers/benefit/ (opens in new window)
• Employee Conditions: https://global.rakuten.com/corp/careers/information/ (opens in new window)
• Culture: https://global.rakuten.com/corp/careers/culture/ (opens in new window)

#corporate #strategyplanning #operationdiv #AI