Software Engineer, Ads Backend

About SmartNews 

SmartNews is a leading global information and news discovery company dedicated to delivering quality information to the people who need it. Thanks to our unique machine-learning technology and relationships with more than 3,000 global publisher partners, we provide news that matters to millions of users.

Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, SmartNews also has offices in Osaka (Kansai Office), Palo Alto, New York and Singapore.

If you share our vision and are passionate about our mission, we encourage you to apply!

Team and Role Mission

The Ads Product Backend Team powers the company's core revenue engine by building high-performance, sustainable, and profitable advertising systems. Operating within a high-traffic ad delivery platform that reaches millions of users, our engineering focuses on four key pillars: Targeting, Ranking, Auction, and Measurement. In an ecosystem where low latency is critical, you will design and scale features within high-throughput applications, driving proactive system architecture improvements to deliver highly relevant, impactful ad experiences.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the architectural design and iteration of robust, scalable online and offline backend systems for our state-of-the-art ad delivery platform.
• Drive engineering efforts across core domains, including Ranking Backend (ad prediction and delivery), Premium Ads (guaranteed visibility and premium positioning), Targeting & Custom Audience (precision user-ad matching), and Measurement (cross-platform performance analytics across web and app scenarios).
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional engineering teams, including Ads Ranking (Machine Learning), Ads Foundation, Data Platform, and AI Infrastructure, to build resilient, high-quality ad products.

Minimum requirements

• BS degree or above in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Science (physics or mathematics) or other relevant majors
• 3+ years experience in developing backend systems for high traffic web services
• Advanced skill and experience in at least one of the following programming languages: Java, Kotlin, Golang (open to C++, C#, Python)
• Fluent in using Kafka, Redis, SQL and some NoSQL DBs
• Business level English and conversational level Japanese

Nice to have experiences/skills

• Experience in advertisement / Ad Tech industry
• High programming skills in Java. E.g. failure analysis and class/interface design
• Experience of architecture design in a high traffic web service
• Experience in AI usages in daily engineering working time
• Configuration, development and operation of a Microservice / Service Mesh architecture
• Experience in Github, AWS, SpringBoot, MySQL, Hive, Spark, Flink, Docker, Kubernetes
• Experience in large scale data processing techniques
• Have basic understanding of machine learning, statistics, and various mathematics at a liberal arts level
• Experience in leading a whole lifecycle of a project; clarification of the motivation and the goal, definition of the system design, develop and release it, and learning from the result
• Skill and will to partner with internal business people to define product strategy and features; for example, ads product managers or ads product specialists
• Business level Japanese

Related Links

• Click here or visit our careers site to check employee interviews

Working condition

• Office Location: Tokyo
• Click here or visit our careers site for more info.

Benefits available at the SmartNews Tokyo Office

• All healthcare and social insurance required by the Japanese labor law, plus annual health check
• Visa sponsorship and overseas relocation support available for eligible candidates
• Click here or visit our careers site for more info about our benefits.