Project Manager-bilingual Japanese/English

Cookpad's mission is to "Make everyday cooking fun." We believe solving everyday cooking challenges worldwide will encourage more people to enjoy cooking, ultimately addressing larger societal issues. Cookpad operates three key services: the globally recognised recipe-sharing platform "Cookpad," the e-commerce service "Cookpad Mart" for easy access to fresh ingredients, and the coaching service "Moment" which helps users cook like professionals.

To achieve Cookpad’s mission swiftly, it is essential to break down emerging challenges, formulate and test hypotheses, and promptly implement strategies based on results. Your role will be to collaborate closely with relevant departments and people, ensuring that necessary service implementations are completed on time and within resource constraints. 

Joining the Founder's team, your role will involve logically analysing complex yet relatively straightforward challenges, planning strategically, adapting flexibly to unexpected situations and ensuring that the outcomes align with the initial value intended for users, all within set deadlines. You will work with various stakeholders including engineers, designers, user support, customer success, business leaders and executives. Understanding our long-term mission challenges is key - you will need to plan backwards from what we want to achieve and set short term goals that you execute effectively.

Your responsibility is to refine components of Cookpad’s three products to deliver the intended user value and create the best cooking experience.

Note: Fluency in Japanese and business level English is essential for this role.

Requirements

Why you are a great fit:

• You are passionate about managing complex projects and collaborating effectively with diverse stakeholders.
• You thrive in uncertain environments, continuously planning from the desired state and finding excitement in completing tasks on schedule.
• You excel in project management with a user-centric approach, maximising product value.
• You can balance technical constraints and user needs to find optimal solutions.

Required skills and experience

To succeed, the following skills are essential:

Progress and risk management through reverse planning: Ability to set milestones by working backwards from the project goal, meticulously track progress and manage tasks. You should be able to visualise progress, share it with the team, enabling early identification and swift responses to issues.

Step-by-Step pathway construction and execution: Ability to clearly define challenges, understand specific solutions and act strategically towards their realisation. It’s essential to set goals and illustrate the concrete paths to achieve them, providing effective leadership to guide the team through complex circumstances while steadily progressing towards project completion.

Problem-solving skills: Insight to identify the root causes of problems beyond superficial phenomena. Utilising data analysis and logical thinking, you should be able to make evidence-based decisions. The ability to repeat cycles of hypothesising, testing, and quickly executing is crucial for increasing the likelihood of on-time project execution.  

Adaptability and practical experience in handling change: Capability to respond swiftly to unforeseen situations and adjust plans flexibly. A composed and effective approach in dealing with various changes or obstacles during project progression is required, along with maintaining team morale while striving toward goals.

Understanding of user value and technical aspects: Ability to understand the trade-offs between user needs and technical constraints to find optimal solutions. A deep insight into user experience and a sufficient understanding of the technical aspects of the project are needed.

Fluency in spoken and written Japanese and business level English: Ability to work with international teams in the UK and Japan.

What We Offer

• Global impact: The opportunity to directly influence users' daily lives in over 70 countries.
• Continuous growth. A chance to dramatically improve your project management skills, including:
• Managing complex stakeholders
• Planning and executing large-scale projects
• Risk management and problem-solving
• Practising agile development methodologies
• Data-driven decision-making
• Collaboration with experts: To solve problems by working with a variety of professionals, including product owners, engineers, designers, and executives.
• Practical experience: An environment where you can gain experience managing and executing multiple critical projects simultaneously.

In this position, you will be expected to maximise user value through project management, utilising strategic thinking and execution skills. Your leadership and management abilities hold the potential to enrich the cooking experiences of people worldwide. Join us in this challenge to make everyday cooking more enjoyable and shape the future of food with your expertise and creativity.

Benefits

What we offer: 

• The position is full-time employment, subject to a probation period. 
• A competitive salary
• An office location in Bristol within 5-10 minutes of major train and bus routes. 
• The chance to work in a fast-paced, highly ambitious team
• A fully stocked large cooking space where we cook and eat together