Welcome to our hiring series- Building Bridges. At Mercari we pride ourselves on building a talented and dynamic team. In this series, you’ll get to know the faces behind the teams that run our organisation. Let’s dive in and get to know them better with the team.
Meet Taichi NAKASHIMA
Taichi joined Mercari Japan in 2017 as an SRE. At that time, the organization was growing rapidly, which led to a slowdown in development speed. To address this, the team decided to migrate Mercari’s monolithic architecture running on an on-premise environment to a microservices architecture on the cloud. Taichi formed a platform engineering team to build a cloud-native platform that would make it easier for developers to run these microservices. Over time, he served as Technical Lead, Engineering Manager, and Director, driving the growth of the platform that now supports various businesses within Mercari. In 2024, he became the VP of Cross-Border Engineering and began leading efforts to build a global foundation that enables Mercari to expand its business internationally.
Mercari India: As you lay the foundation for this new team, what are the key qualities or mindsets you’re looking for in engineers who will drive both localization and scalability for diverse global markets?
Taichi: Our engineering team defines a set of Tenets that guide each member in making decisions, and one of these is “Design for Two.” This principle ensures that every system is designed to support at least two countries or regions from the start. If a system is built on this foundation, it becomes much easier to expand to a third or fourth market — for example, if it already supports two languages, adding another is much simpler. Engineers who join this team must have the capability and foresight to design systems with future flexibility in mind.
In addition to that, we are not simply rebuilding everything from scratch; rather, we are rethinking and refining key foundational elements, drawing on the lessons we’ve learned from past mistakes and current limitations. We expect our engineers to dive deep into these learnings and actively apply them to the new system while utilizing their experience, so we don’t repeat the same challenges.
Additionally, as a startup-like team within the larger Mercari organization, we are small compared to other teams. While we need to move fast, we also frequently pivot and experiment with new directions, approaches, and technologies. Therefore, we look for engineers who are not only comfortable with this pace and change but are also driven by the motivation to try new things and learn quickly.
Mercari India: With teams now spread across India and Japan, how do you envision this cross-border collaboration enhancing Mercari’s ability to launch, learn, and iterate products tailored to different cultural and regional needs?
Taichi: To develop products that truly resonate with global customers, we must design our UI/UX and foundational systems with diverse inputs — something we cannot achieve by developing solely in Japan. Through cross-border collaboration, I expect we will be able to exchange a wide variety of ideas and experiences that can help us enhance our systems and better address the needs of different regions.
This collaboration goes beyond just the technical system perspective; it also extends to how we approach development as a team. Each culture brings its strengths and challenges — for example, engineers in Japan often have a strong quality mindset, while engineers in India tend to move faster and take bolder actions. Naturally, there will be conflicts at times, but I believe that if we work together thoughtfully, we can achieve much better outcomes than we could alone
Meet Anupam Bhattacharjee
Anupam joined Mercari in 2022 as an Engineering Manager in the Recommendation ML Team in Japan, where he has led initiatives to enhance product discovery experience leveraging machine learning. He has over a decade of experience in building and deploying deep learning models for search and recommendation systems. Prior to Mercari, Anupam held various roles across applied machine learning and data platforms, leading teams and contributing to the development of scalable and user-centric engineering solutions. Check some of his cool contributions here
Mercari India: You’re leading the launch of a new Search and Recommendation ML team in India — can you share your vision for this team, and what excites you most about building it from the ground up?
Anupam: My vision is to build a technically strong, product-aligned team that drives innovation in search technology and recommendation systems – two of the most critical levers for user engagement and satisfaction on our app.
What excites me most is the opportunity to design the team’s architecture, both organizationally and technically from the ground up. We’re laying the foundation for scalable and production-ready systems that can serve millions of users. It’s a chance to introduce best-in-class engineering practices, invest in reusable components and collaborate closely with our global teams to accelerate development cycles for state-of-the-art innovations.
Mercari India: As you shape this team, what types of roles and skillsets are you prioritizing? Beyond technical expertise, what personal qualities or approaches would make someone a strong fit?
Anupam: We’re primarily looking for Applied ML engineers and Backend engineers with experience in large-scale recommender systems and search technology respectively. Strong fundamentals in software engineering, ML algorithms, and scalable system design are key.
Beyond that, we’re looking for people who are curious, collaborative, and product-minded, those who enjoy solving open-ended problems, thrive in ambiguity, and care about the real-world impact of their work. A strong sense of ownership and the ability to work across functions will be crucial as we scale.
Mercari India: With strong foundations already established in Japan, how do you plan to foster meaningful collaboration between the India and Japan teams — and spark innovation across both?
Anupam: A key focus is on structured knowledge transfer and onboarding support from the Japan team, they’ve built strong foundations in both search and recommendations and we would like to leverage that experience to avoid reinventing the wheel. However, we’re building for synergy, not dependency. That means designing loosely coupled systems and clear interfaces so that both the teams can move fast independently, while still aligning on shared architecture and principles. This setup encourages autonomy without silos.
At the same time, we would like to foster a culture of openness where teams regularly share learnings, including what didn’t work. This mindset, combined with regular cross-site collaboration on design, reviews, and retrospectives would help both teams grow together while retaining the agility and focus that the early-stage team needs.
Mercari India: What are some of the bold, high-impact projects or technical challenges you envision for the team as it scales?
Anupam: As the team grows, we’ll tackle ambitious projects in the domain of search and recommendation at scale. This includes developing ML based state-of-the-art recommender systems, ranking algorithms among others that leverage multi-modal data and contextual user signals to deliver personalized experiences in real time.
We also plan to leverage scalable, reusable ML infrastructure like feature stores to accelerate experimentation and deployment cycles. Handling increasing data volume in real time while maintaining low latency and high relevance will be a core engineering challenge.
Mercari India: Culture is key when starting fresh — what kind of team environment are you hoping to build in India, and how will you ensure everyone feels empowered, included, and equipped to drive change?
Anupam: We want to build a self-organized team rooted in Scrum principles, where everyone takes ownership not only of their work but of the team’s collective success. Mercari’s four core values: Go Bold, All for One, Be a Pro, and Move Fast will be our guiding principles.
Personally, I am inspired by the Japanese proverb nana korobi ya oki (七転び八起き) which means ‘fall down seven times, get up eight.’ It represents a mindset of resilience, perseverance, and the courage to keep moving forward despite challenges. As we form our team, I want to imbibe this spirit in our culture, encouraging each member to embrace setbacks as learning opportunities, support one another through difficulties, and continuously rise stronger together. This philosophy will be the foundation of how we grow, adapt, and succeed as a team through challenges.
Mercari India: Having previously worked with Mercari Japan, what inspires you most about this new chapter — and what does it mean to now be shaping the Search and ML journey from India?
Anupam: I am truly inspired by the strong foundations laid by the Search and ML teams at Mercari Japan that significantly enhance the user experience on our app. This new chapter is a humbling opportunity to contribute by helping build and grow the search and ML capabilities at Mercari India.
Shaping this journey from the ground up means carefully adapting and expanding proven approaches while encouraging innovation tailored for the global business. It’s an opportunity to foster collaboration across teams combining our expertise to create scalable and impactful solutions for multiple regions. I view it as a responsibility and a privilege to support Mercari’s global mission through thoughtful, steady progress toward becoming a truly AI-native company.
Interested in joining the GOP team? Mercari India is looking to hire for the below role:
Senior Software Engineer
Senior Search Engineer
And if you are inspired to be part of an organization that values growth, learning, and collaboration, we encourage you to look out for more opportunities on our careers website.
Stay tuned for more stories, lessons, and reflections as we continue to learn and grow together.
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