Associate AI Engineer

Job Description:

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Job Summary:
Entry-Level AI Engineer to join our innovative team at Rakuten, dedicated to developing cutting-edge generative AI applications that transform customer service experiences. This role offers an opportunity to work on dynamic projects involving conversational AI orchestration, semantic knowledge retrieval, AI reasoning and action frameworks, retrieval evaluation, and automated testing.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and deploy AI-driven solutions focused on conversational AI and semantic retrieval.
• Implement and maintain software features with a backend-focused full-stack approach.
• Participate in developing robust AI reasoning models and evaluation frameworks.
• Collaborate effectively with Product Managers, Feature Teams, QA/Test Engineers, and Business Operations teams.
• Contribute to automation testing efforts to enhance AI product reliability and performance.
• Stay current on industry trends and actively apply best practices in NLP, LLMs, and conversational AI technologies.

Qualifications:

• Solid foundation in software engineering principles, algorithms, and data structures.
• Familiarity with natural language processing (NLP), conversational AI frameworks, large language models (LLMs), and semantic retrieval.
• Strong programming skills, particularly in Python and familiarity with relevant frameworks and tools.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with backend development and API integrations.
• Exposure to cloud environments (Google Cloud, AWS, Azure).
• Familiarity with automated testing frameworks and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices.

Minimum Requirements:

• Internship or project experience related to AI-driven customer service applications.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science or a related field.

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

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 $72,600.00 - $122,430.00 annually