Sr. Product Manager

Job Summary:

We're looking for a Sr. Product Manager to define and drive the roadmap for our internal Experience Platform (our suite of internal tools and services that empower designers and engineers to create, configure, and deliver the content to our customer-facing products) and Design Systems. You'll collaborate closely with designers, engineers, and product teams to deliver scalable systems and foundational services that power world-class customer experiences. This role directly impacts the efficiency of our product teams and the consistency of our customer experience across all Rakuten Rewards products.

In this role, you will develop, execute, and manage product strategies and roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business objectives and customer needs. You will bridge technical expertise with market insights to guide product development, enhancements, and lifecycle management. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including engineering, marketing, and sales, to define product requirements, prioritize features, and oversee execution. By analyzing data and industry trends, you will make informed decisions that drive innovation and value. Your role will include creating product documentation, conducting competitive analyses, and ensuring a seamless product delivery process to achieve organizational goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the Experience Platform and Design Systems.
• Collaborate with design and engineering leads to define and prioritize feature development based on user needs and business goals.
• Establish and refine intake workflows for feature requests, bug reports, and improvements to the Experience Platform and Design Systems, balancing strategic initiatives with urgent needs.
• Define the governance model for design system enhancements, delivery, and deployment.
• Actively solicit feedback from and advocate for the needs of internal users (designers, engineers, product managers) to continuously improve the Rewards experiences across all platforms.
• Define, track, and report on KPIs such as design system adoption rate, platform uptime, developer satisfaction scores, and time to implement changes.
• Communicate strategy, updates, and impact clearly to stakeholders at all levels.

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Strong technical fluency to collaborate closely with engineering teams and understand system architecture, API documentation, database structures, and front-end frameworks at a high level.
• Proven experience setting roadmaps, managing feature and enhancement intake workflows, and prioritizing across multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent communication, organization, and stakeholder management skills.
• Strong familiarity with design systems and experience using or contributing to design systems in a previous role, UI frameworks, and component libraries
• Experience working in organizations with large-scale design systems and developer platforms.
• Understanding of design tokens, accessibility standards, and the relationship between design and front-end code.
• Experience developing with HTML/CSS
• Familiarity with Web frameworks such as React, app development on iOS or Android a plus.

Minimum Requirements:

• 5+ years of product management experience, preferably owned or defined internal tools such as content management systems, design systems, developer platforms, etc.
• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Design, Information Systems, Business, or a related field required.
• A Master's degree is a plus, particularly with a focus on product management, design systems, or technical platforms.

Five Principles for Success
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team

Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the base compensation for this role to be within the range shown below. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location. The successful applicant for this role will be eligible for discretionary bonus, health, vision, dental insurance, 401k matching, PTO, Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.

USD $115,005.00 - $196,020.00 annually