Welcome to Inside the Manager’s Mind – where early exposure, real-world context, and team trust shape how engineers grow. In this edition, meet Archita Bansal, Engineering Manager at Trust and Safety team at Mercari, shares how a focused trip to our Tokyo office helped junior engineers get hands-on with the product, build cross-location collaboration, and step up their ownership in a big way.

Building Teams That Grow Together

At Mercari, we often talk about working across locations. But building a truly global team is much more than syncing calendars across time zones. It means creating opportunities for engineers to understand different cultures, work styles and product contexts, and to see how all of these come together in the way we build products. It’s equally about building trust across teams and countries so collaboration feels natural, not forced.

As managers, one of the most meaningful things we can do is design experiences that help people grow, not only in their technical skills, but also in confidence, perspective, and ownership. Just as importantly, we play a key role in how they bring empathy and context into their conversations and decision-making, so they can contribute more thoughtfully to both their teams and the broader organization.

What I Do

I lead a horizontal engineering team at Mercari, working with cross-functional partners across locations. My focus is on enabling engineers to work effectively in a distributed, multicultural setup. Creating opportunities for exposure, learning, and ownership and building bridges between teams so collaboration is driven by trust and shared context.

In short, I aim to make global work not just the way we operate, but the way we grow.

A Strategic Opportunity

During a recent business trip to our Tokyo office, I made a deliberate decision to bring along two of our junior engineers, Shivani and Aashutosh. This wasn’t a perk or a reward, but a strategic step to help them accelerate their growth.

Both had consistently demonstrated curiosity, initiative, and a genuine desire to go deeper into the product and our ways of working. I felt that being in the Tokyo office would give them something you can’t fully replicate through documents or video calls: real context, cross-team collaboration, and the opportunity to see how decisions are made and executed in a cross-functional setting.

What I Do

In my role, I intentionally create opportunities like this for engineers, identifying potential, providing exposure to key environments and diverse teams, and using real-world contexts to help them grow faster in ownership, confidence, and impact.

Exposure in Action

In Japan, they weren’t just observing, they were fully involved. From planning discussions and QA collaboration to cross-functional syncs and end-to-end production flows, they gained direct, hands-on exposure. Running live test orders helped them see how users actually experience our journeys and what quality looks like in real usage.

Their involvement in recent Customer Experience Improvement PJ was a key highlight. Being onsite unblocked decisions faster, tightened feedback loops, and built momentum on a complex initiative. As a horizontal team, we work closely with various stakeholders such as client, backend, product, and QA. This trip also strengthened those relationships beyond async communication and showed how teams decide, problem-solve, and build trust with shared context.

What I do

I focus on creating these kinds of high-impact, hands-on experiences for engineers, placing them in real cross-functional work, giving them end-to-end product exposure, and opportunities that build trust and shared context across teams in ways that feel authentic and lasting.

The Ripple Effect

The impact showed up quickly. Shivani and Aashutosh came back with deeper product understanding, stronger ownership, and greater confidence in their contributions. They started asking sharper questions, moved projects faster with better context, and naturally bridged the India and Japan teams. Their value wasn’t just in what they said, but in the empathy and context they brought to every conversation.

Meeting teammates in Japan in person was especially powerful. As a horizontal team, we work across functions every day, but face-to-face time helped build trust, break silos, and create room for more open, effective collaboration. Seeing how others work and communicate in their own environment led to a different level of respect and alignment.

For me, it was a reminder that growth doesn’t always need a new role or a big change. Sometimes, the right opportunity at the right time can meaningfully shift how someone shows up and contributes.

Reflections as a Manager

This trip reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time: impact isn’t defined by seniority. When we trust engineers with meaningful challenges and back them with visible support, their growth accelerates, and the whole team benefits.

Watching both of them step up, take ownership, and thrive was one of the most rewarding parts of this trip. It’s also a reminder of why I actively look for ways to create opportunities where engineers can take real responsibilities, grow in confidence, and contribute meaningfully, with the right support to make an impact that goes beyond their role or title.

A Signal to the Organization

This wasn’t just about two engineers. It was about shaping the culture we’re building at Mercari:

• A culture that values trust, openness, and growth
• A team mindset that treats cross location work as a strength
• An organization where initiative is recognized and learning is part of the journey 

Looking Ahead

Global collaboration doesn’t happen by default. It takes intentional moments of connection, structured learning, and shared ownership to make distributed teams truly work together.

This trip was one step in that direction, and I’m excited to keep creating more such opportunities.