Jobs in Japan
Explore hand-picked jobs in Japan for English speakers across tech, education, marketing, and more.
Vetted companies only. Apply from overseas.
Explore hand-picked jobs in Japan for English speakers across tech, education, marketing, and more.
Vetted companies only. Apply from overseas.
MercariFor more details, see the Overview of Our Positions section on our Careers site. The New Business Design Team leads end-to-end user experience design for emerging product initiatives at Mercari, shaping intuitive, trustworthy, and high-quality experiences for domestic and international users. We partner closely with Product, Engineering, Research, and Business Development to explore new problem spaces and raise the bar for craft, consistency, and innovation. This leadership role shapes both the strategic direction of design and the capabilities of the design team for new business initiatives at Mercari. As we expand into new product spaces, we need a Senior Design Manager who can build and lead a design practice from the ground up, establish design excellence standards, and drive meaningful collaboration across functions. You'll operate with autonomy and ownership over design strategy, team growth, and product outcomes. Your leadership will directly influence how new business ventures succeed at Mercari and how design contributes to revenue, user trust, and satisfaction. This role matters because strong design leadership creates leverage: it unlocks better product strategy, stronger cross-functional collaboration, more durable experiences, and a team invested in their growth. We're looking for leaders who combine design excellence with people leadership, strategic thinking with execution discipline, and the ability to build culture while shipping products that matter. Develop and mentor individual designers through design critiques, feedback, and coaching on craft to support career growth. Own design strategy and direction across assigned product initiatives, translating business and market opportunities into compelling experience strategies. Lead design decisions through strong systems thinking, research integration, and user-centered rationale; communicate design strategy and vision to cross-functional partners. Collaborate deeply with Product, UXR, and Business Development to shape strategy, influence roadmaps, and ensure design excellence in execution. Collaborate across new business domains and with other design leads and stakeholders to ensure experiences align, build on shared learning, and prevent silos. Drive design scalability by building design systems, patterns, and processes that enable efficiency and consistency across multiple initiatives. Manage design resources, timeline priorities, and cross-project allocation to maximize team impact and business outcomes. Represent design perspective in business strategy discussions and contribute to go-to-market planning for new product launches.
- 7+ years of experience in product design, UX leadership, or related fields, with demonstrated progression into management roles. - Proven success leading and developing design teams—hiring, mentoring, performance management, and building team culture. - Strong craft skills across UX, interaction design, and visual design with a sharp eye for detail and quality; portfolio demonstrating high-quality shipped work and design leadership. - Experience leading design strategy in complex or ambiguous problem spaces and translating strategy into compelling experiences. - Track record of influencing product direction, business strategy, and cross-functional decisions through design thinking and storytelling. - Excellent communication and collaboration skills with strong understanding of design systems, scalable patterns, and design infrastructure; ability to represent design perspective to senior leadership and manage resources, timelines, and cross-project allocation.
- Experience scaling design or building design teams from early stage to maturity. - Background designing marketplace, e-commerce, or transaction-based products; experience launching or scaling new business initiatives. - Familiarity with user research methods and demonstrated ability to apply research insights to design strategy. - Understanding of both international and Japanese domestic user needs, cultural nuance, and trust dynamics. - Comfort with experimentation, rapid prototyping, and learning in uncertain environments; ability to make decisions with incomplete information. - Track record of building and shipping products that drive business value and user impact.
