Software Engineer III

Job Description:

Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported. We believe in rewarding all our employees with competitive salaries, performance based annual bonuses, stock options and training opportunities.   

If you’re looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth – join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better. 
 

The Role:
Rakuten Kobo Inc. is looking for a Software Engineer III to join the Catalog team!

This team of 5 people is responsible for the development, quality, delivery and maintenance of our digital product. It partners with other teams to enhance and streamline the processes involved in evaluating, classifying, and extracting critical metrics from available content, ensuring data-driven insights and improved decision-making.

The Software Engineer III plays a vital role in all aspects of delivery from design, planning and implementation through to releasing and monitoring. 
 

Responsibilities:

• Build high quality, scalable software using JVM based languages (Java/Kotlin) using development best practices.
• Take ownership of and drive the technical evolution of Kobo’s content systems.
• Propose designs and Proof of Concepts to Architecture team and work with the team to deliver solutions to Production.
• Be proactive in identifying and addressing problems in Kobo’s systems and development processes.
• Participate in code reviews; happy to give and receive constructive feedback.
• Work closely with other development teams.
• Communicate clearly and effectively with teammates, the Operations team and business stakeholders.
• Mentoring junior team members across Kobo’s development teams.
   

The Skillset:
Required:

• Proficiency in Kotlin and a solid understanding of its syntax and features.
• Strong fundamentals in data structures, algorithms and object-oriented programming.
• Experience with document and relational Databases.
• Extensive software development experience in one or more JVM based general purpose programming languages.
• Software development experience with the Spring framework.
• Must possess strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Interest and ability to learn other coding languages and new technologies as needed.
• SOLID Principles and Practices, IoC & TDD.
• Experience in dealing with multi-threaded scenarios and concurrency issues in code, as well as experience in working on high-performance software.
• Experience using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with application performance monitoring and metrics collection.
• Experience with message bus technologies, pub-sub systems and Web/REST APIs.
• Experienced and knowledgeable in CI/CD and different testing strategies and techniques (Unit, Integration, UI tests).
• Computer Science / Engineering Degree OR equivalent experience.
• Handle ambiguous/undefined problems; ability to think abstractly.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with .NET / C#.
• Working in an agile environment and team.
• Experience mentoring and training other team members.
• An understanding of distributed computing or experience writing such applications.
• Experience with implementing Event Sourcing Applications.
• Experience with a scripting language such as Bash or Python.
• Experience with building web-based user interfaces for internal tooling.
• Experience in Machine Learning.
   

The Perks:

• Flexible hours and remote working environment
• 4 extra long weekends around bank holiday weekends
• Full benefits starting from your first day
• Paid Volunteer days, unlimited sick days
• Flexible spending account
• Talent and development training budget
• Free Kobo device + free weekly e-book or audiobook
• Weekly Kobo Tech University sessions
• Maternity/paternity leave top up

About Rakuten Kobo Inc.

Owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten and headquartered in Toronto, Rakuten Kobo Inc. is one of the most advanced global ecommerce companies, with the world’s most innovative eReading services offering more than 6 million eBooks and audiobooks to 30 million + customers in 190 countries. Kobo delivers the best digital reading experience through creative innovation, award-winning eReaders, and top-ranking mobile apps. Kobo is a part of the Rakuten group of companies.

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially.

Rakuten Kobo would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.

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