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rakuten.com
Job details:
Why should you choose us?
Rakuten Symphony is reimagining telecom, changing supply chain norms and disrupting outmoded thinking that threatens the industry’s pursuit of rapid innovation and growth. Based on proven modern infrastructure practices, its open interface platforms make it possible to launch and operate advanced mobile services in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional approaches, with no compromise to network quality or security.
Rakuten Symphony has operations in Japan, the United States, Singapore, India, South Korea, Europe, and the Middle East Africa region. For more information, visit: https://symphony.rakuten.com.
Building on the technology Rakuten used to launch Japan’s newest mobile network, we are taking our mobile offering global.
To support our ambitions to provide an innovative cloud-native telco platform for our customers, Rakuten Symphony is looking to recruit and develop top talent from around the globe. We are looking for individuals to join our team across all functional areas of our business – from sales to engineering, support functions to product development.
Let’s build the future of mobile telecommunications together!
About Rakuten Group, Inc. (TSE: 4755) is a global leader in internet services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Founded in Tokyo in 1997 as an online marketplace, Rakuten has expanded to offer services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content and communications to 2 billion members around the world. The Rakuten Group has over 30,000 employees, and operations in 30 countries and regions. For more information visit https://global.rakuten.com/corp/.
ROLE OVERVIEW
We are seeking a dynamic and experienced Program Manager to join our Product & Lifecycle Management (PLM) organization. This role sits at the intersection of product strategy, customer delivery, commercial governance, and cross-functional execution. The successful candidate will be the connective tissue between PLM leadership, engineering, commercial, and customer-facing teams — ensuring that roadmaps are current, delivery commitments are met, and the organization operates with rigor and velocity.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
Product Roadmap Management (PLM)
- Own and maintain the end-to-end PLM product roadmap, keeping it accurate, prioritized, and aligned with business strategy.
- Coordinate with product owners, architects, and engineering leads to translate strategic intent into actionable, time-boxed roadmap items.
- Communicate roadmap status, changes, and dependencies to senior stakeholders in a clear and timely manner.
- Facilitate quarterly roadmap reviews and drive consensus on priority trade-offs.
Account Delivery & Account Roadmap Management
- Serve as the central point of coordination for account-level delivery commitments, ensuring PLM deliverables align with customer contractual milestones.
- Work with account teams and delivery leads to build and maintain per-account roadmaps, tracking progress against committed dates.
- Proactively identify delivery risks and escalate or remediate as appropriate.
- Produce regular account delivery status reports for internal and customer-facing audiences.
Product Pricing Management
- Support the pricing lifecycle for PLM-managed products, from initial cost modelling through to approval and commercial launch.
- Coordinate pricing reviews with Finance, Commercial, and Product leadership, ensuring inputs are gathered and decisions are documented.
- Maintain a pricing register for all active and pipeline products, tracking versioning, effective dates, and approval status.
- Flag pricing anomalies, competitive pressures, or margin risks to leadership for timely decision-making.
Jira Governance for Product Roadmaps
- Own and enforce Jira governance standards across PLM — including epic/story taxonomy, workflow states, field hygiene, and labelling conventions.
- Configure and maintain Jira boards, filters, dashboards, and roadmap views to provide accurate real-time visibility.
- Train and onboard team members on Jira best practices; conduct periodic audits to ensure compliance.
- Act as the primary liaison with the tooling/DevOps team for Jira administration and integration requirements.
Leadership Team (LT) Presentations & Calls
- Plan, schedule, and chair regular LT calls, including agenda management, pre-read circulation, and action tracking.
- Prepare high-quality, executive-ready slide decks that synthesise roadmap progress, delivery health, commercial metrics, and key decisions required.
- Ensure LT calls run to time and produce clearly minuted decisions and owners.
- Follow up on LT actions through to closure, maintaining a live action log.
PLM Team Cadence & Operating Rhythm
- Design and run the PLM team's operating cadence — stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and weekly team syncs.
- Manage the PLM team calendar, ensuring meetings are purposeful, well-prepared, and outcome-oriented.
- Produce and distribute meeting notes and action items within 24 hours of each session.
- Identify and eliminate recurring blockers to team velocity through process improvement.
RFP Tracking & Delivery Status
- Maintain a centralized RFP tracker covering all active, pipeline, and recently closed RFPs owned or supported by the PLM team.
- Track submission deadlines, win/loss outcomes, and delivery commitments arising from won RFPs.
- Coordinate with bid management, sales, and technical teams to ensure PLM inputs into RFP responses are accurate, on-time, and commercially sound.
- Produce regular RFP pipeline reports for PLM leadership, highlighting risks, resource demands, and strategic opportunities.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE
- 5+ years of program or project management experience in a technology, telecoms, or managed-services environment.
- Demonstrated experience managing complex, multi-stakeholder product roadmaps.
- Strong commercial acumen with hands-on experience in pricing governance or product commercialization.
- Expert-level Jira skills, including board configuration, advanced filtering, and roadmap tooling (e.g. Jira Product Discovery or Advanced Roadmaps).
- Proven ability to produce board- and C-suite-ready presentations with strong visual storytelling.
- Experience coordinating and running RFP processes within a product or delivery organization.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable presenting to senior leadership.
- Strong organizational discipline — able to manage multiple concurrent workstreams without dropping detail.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Formal PM certification: PMP, PRINCE2, SAFe Program Consultant (SPC), or equivalent.
- Background in Telecom and Enterprise is preferred.
- Familiarity with PLM frameworks (e.g. Pragmatic Institute, AIPMM).
- Experience with Confluence, Miro, or equivalent collaboration and documentation tooling.
- Exposure to financial modelling or cost-to-serve analysis for technology products.
WHAT WE OFFER
- A high-visibility role at the heart of an ambitious product organization.
- Exposure to senior leadership and strategic decision-making.
- Competitive salary and performance bonus aligned to market benchmarks.
- Flexible / hybrid working arrangements.
- Comprehensive benefits package including health, pension, and learning & development budget.
- A collaborative, inclusive culture that values initiative and continuous improvement.
RAKUTEN SHUGI PRINCIPLES:
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviours 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.
- Be 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 success in unknown territory.
- Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to see their customers smile.
- Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team.
Click on Apply to know more.