SmartNews is a leading global information and news discovery company dedicated to delivering quality information to the people who need it. Thanks to our unique machine-learning technology and relationships with more than 3,000 global publisher partners, we provide news that matters to millions of users.
Founded in 2012 in Tokyo, SmartNews also has offices in Palo Alto, New York, Beijing, and Singapore.
If you share our vision and are passionate about our mission, we encourage you to apply!
About the JP Product Team
We're building an innovative, user-centric news platform that uses cutting-edge technology to deliver high-quality journalism in real time.
About the Role
As a Product Manager, you’ll play a key role in driving product innovation and delivering meaningful impact. You’ll be responsible for defining and executing product strategy, leading the end-to-end product lifecycle—from concept through to launch—and collaborating with cross-functional teams to bring ideas to life.
You’ll make strategic decisions to prioritize, pivot, or stop initiatives as needed, while motivating teams and ensuring successful product delivery.
What you'll do
- Ship positive product change to customers
- Build product strategy
- Translate product strategy to executions, working with cross functional partners
- Make hard decisions to prioritize, pivot, and cancel initiatives
- Lead and motivate the team to deliver products
- Manage the product life cycle
Minimum requirements
- 8+ years of product management or equivalent experience
- Understanding and experience in Japan market end users
- Capability to spearhead the entire product experience and turnaround business
- Agile in experimenting and adopting new technologies and product experiences
- Decisive and rapid in setting a direction and changing it
- Experience of navigating through a successful full product lifecycle: from concept to prototype, to test, to full-release, to iterations
- Exceptional analytical and problem-solving skills
- Strong communication and conflict resolution skills
- Experience developing consumer apps or websites
Nice to have experiences/skills
- Technical degree (computer science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, economics or related field)
- Experience with building Web or App with a user-generated contents (UGC) or community
- Proficiency in Japanese language is highly valued
Working condition
- Office Location: Tokyo
Benefits available at the SmartNews Tokyo Office
- All healthcare and social insurance required by the Japanese labor law, plus annual health check
- Visa sponsorship and overseas relocation support available for eligible candidates
