Backend Engineer, Agent Development - AI Lab (AILAB)
Core
Build backend services for conversational and autonomous commerce agents that perform real actions like adding to carts, applying coupons, and updating listings within Rakuten's ecosystem.
Role type
Senior IC backend engineer (agentic commerce systems)
Builds
Production-grade agent infrastructure for shopping assistants and merchant-facing automation tools
Domain
E-commerce, AI agents, distributed systems
Deliverable
production ML models | product features
Required skills
Python, Go, Java, high-traffic transactional backend design, ML-based production systems, distributed systems fundamentals, LLM-backed system infrastructure, agentic patterns (tool/function calling, orchestration), cloud/containerized deployment
Preferred skills
Experience with search/recsys/fraud/risk systems, A/B testing, multi-merchant catalog management
Technologies
Kubernetes, CI/CD, IaC, async/event-driven architecture, queues, distributed tracing
Responsibilities
Build backend services for intent understanding and multi-turn task execution; Own the commerce tool layer (catalog, inventory, cart, checkout); Solve grounding on live catalogs with tens of millions of SKUs; Design transactional safety (idempotency, rollback, audit trails); Build evaluation and observability for commerce outcomes; Optimize latency and unit economics for agent operations
Seniority
Senior, hands-on IC (via careerplan.io/jobs/1036933-147-backend-engineer-agent-development-ai-lab-ailab-at-rakuten)
