Smartphone App Product Manager (PdM/PjM)

This full-time role manages both what to build and how to deliver it for the Akerun smartphone application. Responsibilities cover the full SaaS product development cycle, including design, development, and operations. The role sets the product roadmap, screens requests from the business side against growth measures such as churn reduction and customer satisfaction, prioritizes the backlog, and coordinates development progress so engineers can focus on implementation.

The role defines requirements and specifications in close collaboration with designers and engineers, prepares requirements documents and wireframes, and participates in prototyping. It also plans and drives data-based UX improvements by combining existing backend access-control logs with application behavior logs and BLE telemetry data. The position is the first app-focused product manager in a small development team and is expected to organize requests from Sales and Customer Success, improve engineering productivity, and take ownership of data-log design and specifications.

Required experience includes at least three years as a product manager or project manager for an IT product such as a web or application service, including end-to-end leadership of requirements definition, specification planning, and delivery management. Candidates must be able to work smoothly with engineers through a development background or sufficient technical understanding to discuss API specifications, BLE communication constraints, and common application architectures. The role also requires hands-on execution and ownership in a small-team environment. Experience with smartphone application development or product management for iOS or Android, including mobile guidelines and store-submission processes, is welcomed. Experience introducing or operating Firebase, Amplitude, or Mixpanel and extracting data with SQL is also welcomed, as is development-management experience in a small company or startup environment.

The product is Akerun, an IoT smart-lock and cloud-based access-control service used in offices, gyms, retail stores, universities, factories, and other facilities. The service combines access management with functions such as reception and attendance management. The app works with hardware and is developed as part of an IoT and SaaS product domain.

The application stack includes Kotlin and Java with RxJava, RxAndroid, Dagger Hilt, AndroidX, Retrofit, Clean Architecture, MVVM, some Jetpack Compose, and Android Studio for Android; Swift and Objective-C with SwiftUI, UIKit, XCTest, CoreBluetooth, WidgetKit, Clean Architecture, MVVM, and Xcode for iOS; and Dart with Provider, RiverPod, MVVM, and Visual Studio Code for Flutter. Common tools are Google Workspace, Slack, JIRA, GitHub, Bitrise, and Figma.

The position is based in Minato, Tokyo. Remote work is available, but the role is not fully remote; office attendance is generally required once per week, with an office-centered work style also possible. Working hours are 9:30–18:30 with a one-hour break under a discretionary work system. The annual salary range is JPY 6.5–9.0 million, with a monthly salary of JPY 550,000–750,000 including ability-based pay, performance-based variable pay, and a discretionary allowance covering 45 hours of overtime. Additional premium pay is provided for overtime beyond that allowance. The role includes 124 annual holidays, weekends, public holidays, year-end and New Year holidays, paid leave, and specified company leave programs. Benefits include remote work, a café space, free drinks, club activity support, book-purchase assistance, internal study sessions, study-event fee support, and an awards program. Health, pension, employment, and workers’ compensation insurance are provided. A smoking room is installed.