Job Description:

Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported. We believe in rewarding all our employees with competitive salaries, performance based annual bonuses, stock options and training opportunities.

If you’re looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth – join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better.

The Role:

Rakuten Kobo is seeking an experienced and dynamic manager to lead a mixed team of Developers, Campaign Specialists (CS), and Marketing Automation Specialists (MAS) delivering high-quality campaigns across email, push, landing pages, and associated web experiences. The team also supports implementation and QA of tracking pixels and will expand into banner and landing page experimentation (e.g., VWO testing) to improve measurement and iteration velocity.

This is a technical delivery leadership role. You will be expected to troubleshoot front-end and platform issues, set development and QA standards, and ensure reliable release readiness—while owning project/resource management, process improvement, and tool ownership. You’ll partner closely with Marketing stakeholders to scope and solution work, and you’ll serve as the technical liaison and sign-off partner to Product & Backend R&D teams who own our banner and landing page tooling—defining requirements and acceptance criteria, evaluating proposed changes, and approving rollout readiness for Campaign Development.

What this role is / isn’t

• Not a day-to-day execution role (you won’t personally build every email or landing page).
• Yes to being accountable for technical delivery outcomes: standards, troubleshooting, QA rigor, and predictable execution.

What You’ll Do (Key Responsibilities)

1) People leadership & capability building

• Lead, mentor, and develop Developers, CS, and MAS; build a culture of high performance, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Run coaching, feedback, and performance cycles; support hiring, onboarding, and training.
• Establish and maintain enablement for campaign setup, QA practices, and development standards (internal and external resources where applicable).

2) Delivery operations, project & resource management

• post-campaign reporting.
• Manage capacity planning and prioritization; prevent over-allocation and reduce last-minute escalations.
• Ensure requirements are clear and complete (definition of ready/done), and communicate timelines/risks/tradeoffs crisply.
• Partner with Marketing stakeholders (and Creative Ops/Producers where applicable) to align scope, feasibility, and resourcing.

3) Technical leadership: front-end + platform troubleshooting (supporting the team)

• Serve as the technical escalation point for complex delivery issues across channels/surfaces, including:
• HTML/CSS/JavaScript troubleshooting
• Email/landing page rendering and compatibility issues
• Marketing automation platform workflow/configuration troubleshooting (e.g., Responsys/SFMC/Braze)
• Comfort with custom scripting concepts within Responsys (or similar platforms)
• Ensure the team can reliably implement and QA:
• Pixel/tracking setups (events/parameters, validation)
• Experimentation on banners/landing pages (e.g., VWO), including setup QA and measurement integrity
• Turn recurring issues into durable improvements (templates/components, standards, automated checks, training).

4) QA, release readiness & incident leadership (immaculate bar)

• Own QA strategy and release readiness across channels: quality gates, test plans, stop-ship criteria, launch monitoring, and post-launch verification.
• Drive root-cause analysis and postmortems; implement preventative controls to reduce defect escape rate.
• Ensure incidents are triaged quickly and communicated clearly; translate learnings into repeatable standards, enablement, and automation.

5) Technical liaison to Product & Backend R&D (tooling requirements + final sign-off)

• Act as the Campaign Delivery team’s technical counterpart to Product & Backend R&D for banner and landing page tooling.
• Define technical requirements, edge cases, tracking needs, QA scope, and acceptance criteria for tooling changes.
• Evaluate proposed solutions for delivery impact (risk, rollout readiness, team adoption) and provide final sign-off for changes that affect Campaign Delivery.

6) Data partnership, scalability & roadmap

• Partner with Marketing Technology Solutions to ensure scalable solutioning and aligned data use; help identify and onboard new data points needed for evolving personalization strategies.
• Monitor data quality signals within marketing platforms and escalate discrepancies to the right data owners; drive resolution.
• Identify process/tooling improvements needed to support new products, markets, partners, and languages.
• Drive practical, safe adoption of automation (including AI-assisted workflows) with appropriate guardrails (verification/auditability/PII handling).

7) Audience & data activation (Hightouch) — shared governance model

• MarTech & Data Solutions owns base audience governance (including permissions/consent) and standard templates/structures.
• CS/MAS leverage those bases/templates to build broader audiences and enrichment in Hightouch (or similar).
• Ensure clear decision rights and review gates:
Repeatable audiences
• peer review within Campaign Delivery
Complex/net-new segmentation
• final approval by MarTech & Data Solutions
• Ensure audience definitions are testable, refresh expectations are clear, and activation mappings are validated end-to-end.

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years people management experience (or equivalent leadership scope with clear accountability).
• Development/QA leadership background: experience leading or heavily supporting front-end development and/or QA in a production environment, including setting standards and unblocking teams via technical troubleshooting.
• Strong technical foundation in HTML/CSS/JavaScript with the ability to troubleshoot and guide solutions (not necessarily writing production code daily).
• Proven QA leadership (quality gates, release readiness, incident management, defect reduction), including validation of tracking and experiment setups.
• Strong delivery operations experience: prioritization, capacity planning, dependency/risk management, and stakeholder communication.
• Comfort defining data requirements and audience/segmentation logic, and partnering with Data Solutions on governance and approvals.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional influence across Marketing, Product, and R&D.

Nice to Have

• Experience with marketing automation platforms (Oracle Responsys, SFMC, Iterable, Adobe, etc.).
• Experimentation and tracking experience (e.g., VWO, pixels, event instrumentation).
• Experience with Hightouch (or similar Reverse ETL/CDP activation tooling).
• Familiarity with SQL, API integration concepts, and data warehousing/CDP patterns.
• PMP/Scrum certification (or equivalent delivery leadership).
• Experience implementing automation (including AI-assisted workflows) with appropriate guardrails.

The Perks:

• Flexible hours and hybrid remote working environment
• Subsidized in-office lunches
• Four extended long weekends in the summer
• Full benefits starting from your first day
• Paid Volunteer days, unlimited sick days, and 3% RRSP matching
• Work From Anywhere Program for up to 3 months (90 days)
• Monthly commuting allowance for those who are hybrid
• Lifestyle spending account
• Talent and development training budget
• Free Kobo device + free weekly e-book or audiobook
• Weekly Kobo Spark sessions
• Maternity/paternity leave top up
• Dog friendly office

About Rakuten Kobo Inc.
Rakuten Kobo Inc. is the world’s digital bookseller created by and for booklovers. Owned by Tokyo-based Rakuten Group, Inc. and headquartered in Toronto, Rakuten Kobo’s millions of worldwide users can read anytime, anywhere, and on any device. With a mission to make reading lives better for all, Rakuten Kobo connects readers to stories using thoughtful and personalized curation of eBooks and audiobooks, and the best dedicated eReaders and apps for reading. With the singular focus of making reading lives the best they can be, Kobo’s open platform allows people to fit reading into more moments in their busy lives. To learn more about Rakuten Kobo, visit www.kobo.com.

Rakuten Kobo Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially.

Rakuten Kobo would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.

#RKIND

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

Rakuten is an equal opportunity employer. Accessibility accommodations for candidates with disabilities participating in the selection process are available on request. Any information received related to accommodation needs of applicants will be addressed confidentially.

Rakuten would like to thank all applicants for their interest in this role however only qualified candidates will be shortlisted.

Beware of fraudulent job offers claiming to be from Rakuten. Rakuten does not send unsolicited job offers or request money during the recruitment process. Learn more: https://rakutenemploymentalert.com/

At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the Compensation (base salary + discretionary bonus) 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 stock options, health, vision, dental insurance, RRSP matching, Personal Time Off (PTO), Volunteer Time Off (VTO), and other employee benefits as the company implements.