My Rakuten Experience: Blanc
Blanc is an applications engineer for the travel agile engineering team in the travel development department for Rakuten in Japan.
Current job
As an applications engineer, I am involved in the development and operations of Rakuten Travel’s app. My primary responsibilities are to handle data migration, which consists of moving systems and data to another environment. Currently, I am engaged in a system environment migration for this app and the associated version upgrade work.
Why Rakuten?
I joined Rakuten Travel in 2019 as an application engineer. I was interested in attaining an engineering position at a start-up company. With some help from my employment advisor, I considered various web-related companies. Rakuten Group was one of the companies introduced to me as a potential employer. My initial thought was that because Rakuten was such a large corporation, it was probably not the right fit for me. During the job interview, however, I learned about Rakuten’s capabilities in big data and the impact their products have. It was then that I realized how large the scale of their business is.
At the same time, I was very attracted to their corporate culture and venture mindset, which allows employees to work with their ideas and, at their discretion, on a large-scale business field. I decided to join the company and began working as a new graduate engineer.*¹ I was particularly impressed by how quickly I received a job offer through the Rakuten Agile Job Hunting event, which conducted the selection process in one day. A programming test was conducted in the morning, and the first and second-round interviews were in the afternoon.
Current environment
More recently, I worked on the server migration for Rakuten Travel which had been in use for many years. The migration was necessary to accommodate the growing network traffic associated with expanding business needs. At the same time, a large number of settings were required for implementing network access control, so properly migrating the server posed quite a challenge. As the person in charge of the project, I had to prepare a testing system once the migration plan was set and work closely with the development and quality assurance departments to ensure the control settings were correct. To accomplish this, I proceeded carefully by investigating access logs for a month and repeatedly checked extracted data to ensure no omissions. It was a challenging process, but we felt a great sense of accomplishment when the server migration was completed without any interruption to users, thanks to our careful preparation.
Skill development
Rakuten sets a grand vision to be a “Global Innovation Company,” creating an atmosphere where all employees are united to take on challenges in pursuing this vision. I feel very comfortable working at Rakuten as I can recognize in my colleagues a passion and commitment to achieving a mutual goal. In addition, the development environment, office environment, cafeteria and other facilities are all top-of-the-line, which motivates me in my work. Rakuten has also created a culture of open communication, where employees can freely and openly share ideas that extend beyond their positions. For example, when encountering challenges in my daily work, I actively propose ideas to those around me. Consequently, I receive valuable feedback from both my supervisors and team members. I believe this is all part of Rakuten’s distinctive corporate culture, enabling me to work while experiencing the joy of embracing challenges and personal growth.
What are some things that being at Rakuten allows you to do?
The services provided by Rakuten Travel are extensive in scale. Whenever servers or applications are renewed, it is essential to ensure that all systems are defect-free so that users are unaffected. We must also refine the configuration and make it neat and effective for sustainable application delivery. To carry out these tasks in a balanced, steady and speedy manner, it is necessary to make the most of the diverse personalities on the team, motivate each other and function cohesively as a unit. I strive to solve challenges as a team member at Rakuten daily, where diversity and a sense of unity thrive.
Future goals
Once the migration process is completed, my next priority is to address the technical challenges in ensuring a stable migration. I aim to take the lead in resolving such issues by enhancing my skills. Within my current management-related duties, I am responsible for bringing together members of various nationalities and managing their tasks and schedules, among others. I aim to build up my technical knowledge as an engineering manager and develop the ability to deploy this knowledge globally. In the future, I want to become someone who can be active in Japan and worldwide.
*¹: Rakuten Group, Inc. adopts a position-based recruitment system for new graduates in the engineering field.
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