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

Job Description:

Department Overview

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

2. 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