Applications: candidates may apply from outside Japan. Visa sponsorship: available. Japanese: Not required. English: Business level. Japan Dev tags: Engineering, SRE.
About Us
Kamikai Labs is reimagining the future of 2D animation. Through our AI-powered suite of production tools, we help the world’s leading animation studios and indie creators ship higher-quality work faster than ever before. Our products are already in active use across top-tier Japanese studios, and we’re growing quickly as demand accelerates.
We’re now looking for a Senior or Staff Full-Stack Engineer, a strong generalist who loves shipping real products and owning problems end-to-end, to join our Tokyo-based team.
in applying to this job listing - please write only 1-3 bullet points about why you are an excellent fit.
About the Role
This is a product-driven, high-autonomy engineering role. You’ll work across the entire stack to design, build, and ship user-facing features used daily by professional animators and production teams. You’ll collaborate closely with designers, ML engineers, and founders, but you’ll also be trusted to independently take ideas from concept to production.
We’re looking for engineers who care deeply about shipping, have a strong JavaScript foundation, and can point to real products or systems they’ve built and delivered.
Key Responsibilities
- Own features end-to-end: scoping, implementation, launch, iteration, and maintenance
- Build and ship product-facing web applications with a strong focus on usability and performance
- Develop and maintain backend APIs and services that support production workflows
- Integrate ML inference endpoints and internal services via clean, reliable APIs
- Move quickly in a scrappy environment — while progressively hardening systems for scale
- Collaborate with designers and artists to ensure tools match real studio workflows
- Improve product quality through thoughtful refactors, testing, and system design
- Help shape engineering standards, architecture, and development velocity as the team grows
Requirements
- Senior- or Staff-level experience as a full-stack engineer
- Strong fluency in JavaScript and modern web development
- Proven track record of shipping real products — personal projects, startups, or production systems
- Comfortable working across frontend, backend, and infrastructure as needed
- Experience building and consuming APIs (REST, WebSockets, etc.)
- Strong product instincts: you think about users, edge cases, and long-term maintainability
- Able to work autonomously, take ownership, and make pragmatic tradeoffs
- English fluency required; Japanese is a bonus
- Based in Japan or willing to relocate (relocation support provided)
Bonus Qualifications
- Experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Svelte, Next.js, etc.)
- Backend experience in Node.js, Python, or similar
- Familiarity with production databases (Postgres, Redis, etc.)
- Experience scaling systems from early-stage to production-grade
- Past work in creative tools, SaaS, or developer-facing products
- Interest in animation, creative software, or artist workflows
Why Join Kamikai?
- Ship real products used by some of the best animation studios in the world
- High autonomy and ownership in a fast-moving, growing company
- Work alongside a deeply creative, technical, and passionate team
- Direct influence on product direction, engineering culture, and company trajectory
- Competitive compensation, relocation support, and equity