Engineering Manager

Adora's engineering team is growing fast — and coordination is becoming our biggest bottleneck. We need an Engineering Manager who can step in, own project flow end-to-end, and free the CTO to focus on long-term technical strategy. Think: Scrum Master, Engineering Lead, and Team Builder rolled into one.
This is the on-ramp to a VP of Engineering role as the team scales. You'll be the person who makes 5–10 brilliant but busy engineers actually ship together — on time, with quality, and without burning out.
Fluency in both Japanese and English is a hard requirement. You will work with Japanese stakeholders (KDDI, municipalities, school boards) and an international engineering team simultaneously. This role is best performed in-person at our Kinshicho office, especially while you're building trust and context.

What You'll Do

• Own the end-to-end project coordination process across the engineering team.
• Run agile/Scrum ceremonies — sprint planning, standups, retrospectives — and keep all projects on track.
• Work closely with the CTO to translate technical strategy into executable engineering plans.
• Manage task distribution and workload balance across the team.
• Be the communication bridge between engineering and stakeholders (product, customer success, leadership, partners).
• Hire, onboard, and mentor engineers; help grow a high-performance, international engineering culture.
• Identify process gaps and implement practical, startup-appropriate solutions.

Our Culture

• Small, high-calibre team — average age 26–27, many with overseas study or work experience.
• English is our official working language (Japanese also spoken).
• Fully remote & full-flex — we have a Kinshicho (Tokyo) office, but you can work from anywhere.
• Flat org, low hierarchy — everyone talks directly to the CTO and CEO.
• Serious mission, startup energy — we care deeply about social impact and move fast.

Awards & Partnerships

🏆 Cabinet Secretariat 'IchiBiz Award' — Public Safety Prize
🏆 Aichi Prefectural Police Headquarters Award
🏆 18th Kids Design Award — Special Prize from the Jury Chair
🤝 KDDI — Official app on the U12 Value Plan (since Sept 2025)
🤝 Aichi Nisshin City Board of Education — Kodomamo for School adoption agreement

• Bilingual (Japanese and English): Fluent professional communication in both is a hard requirement, not a preference.
• 4+ years of engineering management experience.
• 5+ years total as a software engineer — you must have the technical credibility to earn respect from the engineers you lead.
• Proven track record at a startup — Series A, B, or C stage strongly preferred.
• Experience with agile methodologies (Scrum or Kanban) in a fast-paced environment.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, able to move fast, and not dependent on big-company support structures.

• Prior VPoE or Head of Engineering experience at a startup.
• Background in mobile, backend, or full-stack engineering.
• Experience with AI/ML product development.
• Experience in international or bilingual engineering teams.

Who This Role Is NOT For

• Candidates whose entire career has been at large tech companies or consulting firms — startup instincts are essential here.
• Managers who strongly prefer fully remote at this stage — in-person presence at our Tokyo office is important for this leadership role.
• Candidates who want clearly bounded job scopes — this role requires a builder's mindset.