AI/ML Engineer (Conversational AI) – Remote (Japan)

Overview

Are you eager to:

• Make meaningful changes at a fast-growing tech company?
• Join a fair, inclusive, and highly flexible work environment where people from any background can contribute and succeed?
• Build next-generation conversational commerce technology to drive customer acquisition and revenue growth?
• Work in a place where things don’t just move fast — they happen now?

About the Role

As an AI/ML Engineer (Conversational AI), you will design, build, and optimize the machine-learning models and infrastructure powering a Conversational Commerce platform. This includes:

• Building with cutting-edge Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, vector search, and classical ML algorithms (intent classification, recommendation, user behavior prediction).
• Owning the full model lifecycle: data collection, feature engineering, training, evaluation, deployment, and online monitoring.
• Working closely with product, backend, and data teams to bring state-of-the-art research into reliable, scalable, and secure production systems.

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Responsibilities

AI / ML & NLP Research & Optimisation

• Design, train, and maintain LLMs, RAG pipelines, vector-retrieval modules, and conventional ML models (e.g., intent classification, recommendation, anomaly detection).
• Build multilingual NLP components (NER, sentiment analysis, topic modeling) for Japanese, Chinese, and English.
• Apply prompt engineering, fine-tuning, quantization, and distillation for accuracy and cost-efficiency.
• Own the full model lifecycle: data collection, feature engineering, training, evaluation, and iterative improvement.

Production Deployment & Continuous Delivery

• Collaborate with backend, data-engineering, and product teams to deploy models on AWS/GCP with CI/CD, blue-green or canary releases, online monitoring, and A/B testing.
• Build scalable architectures (Docker/Kubernetes/serverless) for training, inference, and monitoring.
• Orchestrate end-to-end ML pipelines (Airflow, Kubeflow, etc.) and manage model registry & feature store.

Research & Technology Scouting

• Track and prototype the latest AI/ML/NLP research and open-source projects; quickly translate promising ideas into product value.
• Conduct offline/online experiments, report metrics (precision@k, recall, latency, serving cost) to guide roadmaps.

Internal Tooling & Knowledge Sharing

• Build automated experimentation platforms, reproducible notebooks, and evaluation dashboards.
• Author best-practice documentation, code samples, and deliver tech talks to foster team upskilling and a learning culture.

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Qualifications

Must Have

• 3+ years practical experience in AI/ML/NLP products, from proof of concept to production.
• Proven expertise in RAG systems and vector database integration (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone, Qdrant) with LLMs.
• Advanced Python skills and proficiency with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Hands-on experience with cloud deployment and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Strong data engineering fundamentals (ETL pipelines, feature stores, data-quality controls).
• Excellent technical communication in English (Japanese is a plus).

Nice to Have

• MLOps experience: model versioning, ML CI/CD, feature stores, monitoring, automated retraining.
• Track record optimizing large-scale LLM inference (quantization, distillation, LoRA, etc.).
• Background in conversational AI, voice interfaces, or multilingual chatbots.
• Experience with privacy, generative-AI risk, security hardening.
• Open-source contributions, publications, or a technical blog.
• Familiarity with AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI, serverless, or GPU-cluster cost optimization.

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Benefits & Perks

• Competitive salary
• Performance reviews: Twice yearly
• Holidays: 10 days annual leave in the first year, weekends off, national holidays, summer/winter breaks, 5 refreshment leave days per year
• Visa support for qualified candidates
• Flexible, remote-first in Japan; interim work from overseas is possible
• Housing allowance (if living within 1.5km of the office)
• Club activity, team building, lunch, and event allowances
• Zeals Bar: Bi-monthly free-flow beer party

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Workplace & Culture

• Inclusion at every level, with a team committed to revolutionizing online hospitality.
• Twice awarded LinkedIn Top Startups award, recognizing growth and ability to attract top talent.
• Growth opportunity in a supportive, dynamic environment.

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Ready to bring next-generation conversational AI to the world? Bring your ideas and skills—let’s shape the future together!