Rakuten

Software Engineer Interview Experience - Tokyo

March 1, 2019

Positive ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I applied online and received an invitation for an online Codility test. Basically, I finished it, but my performance may not have been very good. Still, I passed and got the next video online interview. They just asked me about some experiences on my resume and why I wanted this position at Rakuten. It was not long, and I got the next on-site interview. This was pretty similar to the video interview, just further into some specific projects I did. If you are familiar and confident with what you contributed to several projects, then it is not difficult. Just explain yourself well. There have been no coding questions until now. But I am going to take the next (possibly final) interview online again.

Questions

Explain the service structure of one of your projects in detail.

Use the whiteboard.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 75 interview experiences for the Rakuten Software Engineer role in Tokyo.

Success Rate

24%

Pass Rate

Rakuten's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in Tokyo is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive51%

Neutral33%

Negative16%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Rakuten's Software Engineer interview process in Tokyo.

Rakuten Work Experiences

Challenging Work, Free Meals

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

January 17, 2025

Pros: A lot of challenges exist. Free meals are provided for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Cons: Top-down culture. Too many working hours.

Challenging Work, Free Meals

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

January 17, 2025

Pros: A lot of challenges exist. Free meals are provided for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Cons: Top-down culture. Too many working hours.

Emerging Global company, setting new standards in Japan

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Very supportive hiring process and VISA assistance. Very qualified and talented people from many countries of the world. Achieved significant success with Englishization project. Great work-life balance, especially in a Japanese company. Defined processes being a large organization. Very popular in Japan; people respect you once they get to know that you work at Rakuten.

Cons: Low compensation, hence a bad retention rate. Too many meetings and presentations.

Emerging Global company, setting new standards in Japan

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Very supportive hiring process and VISA assistance. Very qualified and talented people from many countries of the world. Achieved significant success with Englishization project. Great work-life balance, especially in a Japanese company. Defined processes being a large organization. Very popular in Japan; people respect you once they get to know that you work at Rakuten.

Cons: Low compensation, hence a bad retention rate. Too many meetings and presentations.

It was a fun place to work, now it's average..

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Aliso Viejo, California, United States

Pros: This used to be such a great company to work at, with interesting projects in development and IT managers who are helpful and supportive. I still really like my job here, though not as much as I used to before the downturn. Retail has become a difficult sector in general, but online is the only place to be in retail. So, if this company can succeed with their goals, it might really take off and become huge.

Cons: The company was bought by a Japanese conglomerate. Most all perks have disappeared, and everyone is now working at long, open tables, which is totally distracting. The pressure is on to do more with less. I'm not too sure if the new remote control management from Japan is capable of measuring up to the task they've been assigned. They want to grow our company into the equivalent of Amazon, which, while a nice goal, is going to be harder than hard. We'll see what happens.

It was a fun place to work, now it's average..

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Aliso Viejo, California, United States

Pros: This used to be such a great company to work at, with interesting projects in development and IT managers who are helpful and supportive. I still really like my job here, though not as much as I used to before the downturn. Retail has become a difficult sector in general, but online is the only place to be in retail. So, if this company can succeed with their goals, it might really take off and become huge.

Cons: The company was bought by a Japanese conglomerate. Most all perks have disappeared, and everyone is now working at long, open tables, which is totally distracting. The pressure is on to do more with less. I'm not too sure if the new remote control management from Japan is capable of measuring up to the task they've been assigned. They want to grow our company into the equivalent of Amazon, which, while a nice goal, is going to be harder than hard. We'll see what happens.

Challenging Work, Free Meals

Software Engineer • Former Employee

Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

January 17, 2025

Pros: A lot of challenges exist. Free meals are provided for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Cons: Top-down culture. Too many working hours.

4.0
Challenging Work, Free Meals
Software Engineer • Former Employee
Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
January 17, 2025
Pros: A lot of challenges exist. Free meals are provided for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Cons: Top-down culture. Too many working hours.

Emerging Global company, setting new standards in Japan

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: Very supportive hiring process and VISA assistance. Very qualified and talented people from many countries of the world. Achieved significant success with Englishization project. Great work-life balance, especially in a Japanese company. Defined processes being a large organization. Very popular in Japan; people respect you once they get to know that you work at Rakuten.

Cons: Low compensation, hence a bad retention rate. Too many meetings and presentations.

4.0
Emerging Global company, setting new standards in Japan
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Tokyo, Japan
March 10, 2015
Pros: Very supportive hiring process and VISA assistance. Very qualified and talented people from many countries of the world. Achieved significant success with Englishization project. Great work-life balance, especially in a Japanese company. Defined processes being a large organization. Very popular in Japan; people respect you once they get to know that you work at Rakuten.
Cons: Low compensation, hence a bad retention rate. Too many meetings and presentations.

It was a fun place to work, now it's average..

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Aliso Viejo, California, United States

Pros: This used to be such a great company to work at, with interesting projects in development and IT managers who are helpful and supportive. I still really like my job here, though not as much as I used to before the downturn. Retail has become a difficult sector in general, but online is the only place to be in retail. So, if this company can succeed with their goals, it might really take off and become huge.

Cons: The company was bought by a Japanese conglomerate. Most all perks have disappeared, and everyone is now working at long, open tables, which is totally distracting. The pressure is on to do more with less. I'm not too sure if the new remote control management from Japan is capable of measuring up to the task they've been assigned. They want to grow our company into the equivalent of Amazon, which, while a nice goal, is going to be harder than hard. We'll see what happens.

3.0
It was a fun place to work, now it's average..
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Aliso Viejo, California, United States
July 8, 2012
Pros: This used to be such a great company to work at, with interesting projects in development and IT managers who are helpful and supportive. I still really like my job here, though not as much as I used to before the downturn. Retail has become a difficult sector in general, but online is the only place to be in retail. So, if this company can succeed with their goals, it might really take off and become huge.
Cons: The company was bought by a Japanese conglomerate. Most all perks have disappeared, and everyone is now working at long, open tables, which is totally distracting. The pressure is on to do more with less. I'm not too sure if the new remote control management from Japan is capable of measuring up to the task they've been assigned. They want to grow our company into the equivalent of Amazon, which, while a nice goal, is going to be harder than hard. We'll see what happens.

Rakuten Interview Questions

Rotate Image

You are given a square matrix representing an image. Rotate the image by 90 degrees clockwise in-place.

3Sum

Find all unique triplets in an array that sum to zero. You'll need to consider the potential for duplicate numbers and avoid duplicate triplets in your solution.

ArraysTwo Pointers

Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock II

Maximize your profit by buying and selling a stock multiple times. You're given an array representing stock prices, and can make as many transactions as you want.

ArraysGreedy Algorithms

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