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

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
• 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