Tech Talks vol.14 – Backend Engineer

About Tech Talks

In this Tech Talks series, we will share with you the attitude and vibe of the PayPay Tech Team through the voices of the unique product members from around 40 countries! This time, Yushi Omote (aka “Omo”) from the Payment Team will share his story.

*The Japanese version of the article is also available here.

What I currently do

I do backend development for the PayPay payment system. I am in charge of backend services that provide the main features of PayPay, like payments, P2P, and top ups. On top of adding new functions, we perform various improvement tasks as needed, such as workflow improvement and performance enhancement. Currently, our main focus is on improving operational efficiency, so that by reducing the extra burden on engineers, each person can focus on developing new features and making the necessary improvements.

A technical challenge I experienced recently

With the number of payments increasing day by day, we needed to find a configuration that could tune up PayPay’s payment processing to achieve higher performance. PayPay employs a very large-scale microservice architecture where various services and components are called for a single payment transaction, so identifying bottlenecks is not that simple. It was crucial to narrow down and identify bottlenecks one by one, by mocking or visualizing the appropriate factors. Based on the bottlenecks we discovered, it was important to both frequently share information and closely work with the teams responsible for the related systems. We had to collaborate across several teams to analyze not only individual service application configurations, but also Kubernetes configurations, and DB and connection configuration issues.

Also, various manual tasks occur while teams develop new features and test their workflow. As we have to develop more and more new features, this manual workload is becoming quite significant. So, we are actively promoting automation. For example, there is the process of manually creating test branches, which we automated using GitHub Actions and other tools. Since feature development progresses every day, it was necessary to adopt a less burdensome method, like running a job with a single click.

Challenges I want to take up at PayPay

I would like to learn a wide range of technologies and grasp the essence of each one. Also, through development with talented engineers from around the world, I want to come into contact with new values and knowledge and expand my technical skills.

A day in the life of Omo

I get up between 7 and 8 a.m. Before work, I do a little exercise (if I have the energy), do some housework, and then send the kids off to kindergarten. After arriving at the office, I check Slack to see if there are any questions from team members or inquiries from other teams, and respond to them according to priority. Then throughout the day I design, code, review PRs, and hold meetings via Zoom as needed. Meeting hours vary from day to day, but on average I spend one to two hours.

My career before joining PayPay

I was doing backend development for a securities trading system. I designed and implemented the part of the system that processes at high speed and imports the stock prices and other data distributed by exchanges into the in-house system, as well as the common libraries required for doing that.

The reason I decided to join PayPay

After reading various articles, I got the impression that PayPay was attracting talented engineers from all over the world. I believe that places where diverse values mix and coexist tend to have less egos and stereotypes, and that more correct technology choices are made based on free and healthy discussions. I wanted to work in that kind of environment. After joining the company, I saw that PayPay was just like that.

I’m also interested in developing systems that will become critical infrastructure that have a significant impact on people’s daily lives. PayPay is an environment where I can be actually involved in the development of such systems. Developing an impactful system is an extremely rewarding experience, and there is a strong sense of accomplishment in knowing that the results of your hard work can immediately influence your life.

A message to aspiring PayPay employees

It’s a great company where you can create important systems that will become Japan’s infrastructure, while interacting with various engineers from all over the globe. I look forward to working with all of you who are active, daring, and possessing diverse values.

Author: OMO / Editorial Supervisor: Mune / Editor: Az / Translator: Justin / Translation Editor: Language Communication Team *Employees’ affiliations are as of the time of the interview.