Setting Up a Global Team from Scratch: The Future Envisioned by an Engineering Manager

PayPay Card Corporation has begun global recruitment of engineers along with the expansion of its business.
This time we interviewed Alain, the Engineering Manager in charge of hiring, about PayPay Card’s corporate culture and the qualities sought for in potential team members.

Building a World-Leading Development Team

What led to your decision to join PayPay Card?

I worked as an IT consultant in a French consulting firm after graduating from university. Then I took on the challenge of setting up a food tech company in Hong Kong.
After that, I moved my base to Japan and joined PayPay as a frontend engineer in November 2020. Gaining experience in various areas through my work in PayPay’s rapidly growing business, I came to join the PayPay Card team after hearing about their plan to establish a global team, which project I volunteered to participate in.

What is your mission?

My mission is to build a global development team, and I’m focusing on recruiting engineers from all over the world.
The reason for hiring globally is that we want to replicate in PayPay Card what has been achieved with PayPay’s services, which were created with the knowledge and expertise of world-class engineers from around the world. PayPay is now used by stores and services all over Japan. In a few years, it will become an even larger and more influential group of corporations by collaborating with other financial services such as credit cards, securities, and banking. We believe that further enhancing our services and providing financial solutions in a wide range of fields will contribute to the financial digitalization in Japan.

In addition, as the PayPay Card business expands, I want to increase the team’s productivity through gradual improvements in our internal structure, system architecture, agile method, and communication management, creating an environment where engineers can concentrate more on their work. This requires team members who can not only write code but actively communicate with colleagues to drive improvements as a team.

Creating an Environment that Unleashes Developers’ Potential

What are your current initiatives?

There are two things I’m working on in particular:
First, I want to instill a mindset in which each member takes ownership and goes one step further. When a problem arises, it is important to capture the essence of the issue and solve it fundamentally, rather than just superficially dealing with it on an ad hoc basis. Especially in my team, I want to emphasize the importance of not being passive, but taking ownership in working to solve problems.

Second, I want to focus on improving our developers’ working environment. Just as an improved UX can increase user retention, creating a good environment for developers leads to enhancing their productivity and happiness. I will be striving to maintain an environment where people are willing to answer each other’s questions and be there to help, even when things are busy.

I hope to address the challenges at hand, while continuing to make our developers’ working environment even better.

Leveraging Diversity to Create New Value with a Global Team

Please tell us your personal goals and visions for the future!

I find it interesting to see the overall picture as a team and as a product through various people’s perspectives, which I can do because as a manager, I communicate with team members and management to check the progress of product development.
As mentioned earlier, my major goal is to hire developers globally and build a team equipped with the necessary expertise in collaboration with other departments. This is a big challenge that I have never experienced before.

Global hiring is expected to bring new members from a variety of backgrounds to our team. As a manager, I need to come up with specific ways on how we can cooperate effectively regardless of any differences such as language, positions, and ways of thinking.

I also want to acquire change management skills in order to keep improving various things. Change management is a management technique for driving changes toward a goal or desired state. For instance, when improving our current process, this approach allows us to implement it step by step, rather than transforming too much at once, by announcing the changes in advance so that members have time to prepare. I will learn more about these management techniques to contribute to the company.

What type of person is suitable to work for PayPay Card?

Taking the lead in delivering results as a professional in your field is what is required when working in PayPay Card.

In addition, it is also necessary to communicate with others in a thoughtful manner. Since PayPay Card will increase diverse members from all over the world, we need to be considerate of the other person’s feelings when communicating, so as not to unintentionally hurt them.
For example, the meaning of a single word may differ depending on which country you’re from. It is also important for each of you to consider what words can convey your intentions best.

If you are able to communicate from the other person’s perspective, I am sure you will do well at PayPay Card. I would like to build a team where everyone can act with consideration for each other and feel safe to come to work every morning.

Lastly, a message for our readers please!

PayPay has achieved dramatic growth in payments. From now on we will expand our services to various other financial domains, further growing our business as a group. The expansion of PayPay Card is a first big step for that. We would love to have new members who are excited to take on the challenge in building the new development team.

PayPay Card has an environment where you can volunteer to solve problems and your colleagues are always willing to support you. If you can actively enjoy changes and like to be proactive in developing products, I highly encourage you to apply for a position. I’m looking forward to working with you!

*Job openings and employee affiliations are current as of the time of the interview.