About the Company:Rakuten India is the Development Centre and key technology hub of the Rakuten Group, Inc. We enable our businesses with our depth of knowledge in multiple streams of technology such as Mobile and Web Development, Web Analytics, Platform Development, Backend Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and much more. Our unique 24/7 support center ensures reliability and sustenance of the Rakuten Ecosystem. With dedicated centres of excellence for Mobile Application Development, Data Analytics, Engineering, DevOps and Information Security, we ensure the success of multiple units of Rakuten Group, Inc. With 1700+ employees and growing, Rakuten India is housed in Crimson House Bangalore in the heart of the city.Job Summary: We are seeking an experienced and highly skilled Lead Operations / Manager – Operations Engineer to join our Business Support Systems (BSS) Telecom team at Rakuten India. This pivotal role involves leading the operational management, optimization, and continuous improvement of our complex BSS platforms that underpin Rakuten Mobile's revolutionary services. The ideal candidate will possess deep technical expertise in telecom BSS, a strong background in cloud-native operations, a proven track record in incident and problem leadership, automation, and a passion for driving operational excellence and mentoring junior team members. This is an exceptional opportunity to significantly influence the stability and scalability of a leading-edge mobile network.Roles and Responsibilities:Operational Leadership & Strategic Management:Lead the day-to-day operational activities of BSS platforms, ensuring high availability, performance, and reliability for critical business functions.Act as the primary technical lead during major incidents, coordinating resolution efforts across multiple teams (DevOps, SRE, Network, Development) and communicating effectively to stakeholders.Contribute to the strategic planning and roadmap for BSS operations, focusing on long-term stability, scalability, and cost efficiency.Drive proactive problem management initiatives, identifying systemic issues, implementing permanent solutions, and preventing recurrence.Advanced System Monitoring, Performance Tuning & Capacity Planning:Design, implement, and refine comprehensive monitoring, alerting, and logging solutions for BSS applications and their cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, public cloud platforms like AWS/Azure/GCP).Conduct in-depth performance analysis, identify bottlenecks, and lead efforts to optimize BSS system configurations, database queries, and application behavior.Perform capacity planning and forecasting for BSS components, ensuring infrastructure resources align with business growth and traffic demands.Automation, SRE Principles & Operational Efficiency:Champion and implement Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles within BSS operations, focusing on error budgets, SLOs/SLIs, and toil reduction.Lead the development and implementation of advanced automation frameworks and tools (e.g., Python, Go, Shell, Ansible, Terraform) for deployment, configuration management, self-healing, and operational tasks.Drive initiatives for continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) and infrastructure as code (IaC) within the BSS operational landscape.Technical Mentorship & Knowledge Management:Mentor, coach, and provide technical leadership to junior and mid-level operations engineers, fostering their growth and skill development.Develop and maintain high-quality technical documentation, runbooks, architectural diagrams, and standard operating procedures (SOPs).Facilitate knowledge sharing sessions and best practice dissemination across the team.Cross-Functional Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement:Collaborate extensively with Product Management, Development, QA, SRE, and Network Engineering teams on new feature deployments, system upgrades, and architectural improvements.Represent BSS Operations in technical discussions, design reviews, and project planning meetings, providing critical operational insights.Communicate complex technical issues and resolutions clearly to non-technical stakeholders and senior management.Security & Compliance:Ensure BSS operations adhere to security best practices, compliance regulations, and internal policies.Participate in security audits and implement necessary remediation actions.Required Skills and Qualifications:Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Telecommunications, or a related engineering discipline. Master's degree is a plus.5 - 10 years of progressive and hands-on experience in a Senior Operations, SRE, DevOps, or Technical Lead role within the telecom industry.Deep and comprehensive understanding of the full BSS stack and its lifecycle:Billing & Charging: Rating engines, Invoicing, Revenue assurance, Mediation, Collections, Interconnect.CRM: Customer lifecycle management, Self-service portals, Trouble ticketing, Service order management.Order Management: Complex order orchestration, Fulfillment across diverse systems, Service activation/deactivation.Product Catalog: Offer definition, Product lifecycle management.Provisioning: Real-time and batch provisioning to network elements.Expert-level proficiency in cloud-native technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), and associated services.Advanced proficiency in database management: Expert-level SQL, performance tuning, replication, and backup strategies for relational (e.g., PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL) and NoSQL (e.g., Cassandra, MongoDB) databases.Proven experience designing and implementing robust monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Splunk).Strong programming/scripting skills for automation (e.g., Python, Go, Shell scripting) and experience with configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Chef, Puppet).Extensive experience with incident, problem, and change management processes and tools (e.g., Jira Service Management, ServiceNow) in an ITIL-aligned environment.Solid understanding of telecommunication network architectures (e.g., 4G/5G core, RAN, IMS, IP/MPLS) and how BSS interacts with them.Exceptional analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills for complex, distributed systems.Excellent communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills, with the ability to influence and drive technical discussions.Demonstrated ability to manage multiple priorities, work under pressure, and drive projects to completion.Preferred Skills (Bonus Points!):Experience with specific BSS vendor platforms (e.g., Amdocs, Ericsson, Oracle, Huawei) or significant contributions to open-source BSS solutions.Familiarity with Kafka or other message queuing systems.Experience with API Gateway management and microservices architecture.Certifications in relevant cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Azure Solutions Architect) or Kubernetes (CKA, CKAD).Experience with performance testing and tuning tools.“Rakuten is committed to cultivating and preserving a culture of inclusion and connectedness. We are able to grow and learn better together with a diverse team and inclusive workforce. The collective sum of the individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, innovation, self-expression, and talent that our employees invest in their work represents not only part of our culture, but our reputation and Rakuten’s achievement as well. In recruiting for our team, we welcome the unique contributions that you can bring in terms of their education, opinions, culture, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity and expression, nation of origin, age, languages spoken, veteran’s status, color, religion, disability, sexual orientation and beliefs”
Job Title
Senior Technical Specialist