Director of R&D

R&D, Ramat Gan, Israel (Hybrid), August 14 2025

Description

Rakuten Viber is one of the most popular and downloaded apps in the world. Working with us provides a unique opportunity to influence hundreds of millions of our users and to be part of the journey that makes us a super-app. Our mission is to make people’s lives easier by enabling meaningful connections, from precious moments with family and friends, through managing business relationships to pursuing their passions.

We’re looking for a talented R&D Director to lead the R&D department for Viber Business Messages and Bots. As a R&D Director you’ll lead teams building scalable, high‑impact features that enable businesses worldwide to connect with customers via Viber Business Messages API. You’ll balance technical leadership, team growth, and strategic alignment with business and product goals to scale global product. This is a highly influential senior role that has a significant impact on the success and roadmap of the product and business.

The right person should have experience in leading, hiring and coaching high performance teams of mobile client development, backend, and QA engineers. You will be working closely with senior management, product management, business leads, and with our global teams (Tel-Aviv, Russia, UK and others). Ideal candidates will have experience from API or communications platform driven B2B or B2B2C company.

Responsibilities

Manage and coach high-performing global teams of client, backend, web and QA engineers
Experience building and leading platform engineering efforts in messaging, cloud services, or communications platforms.
Quickly deliver high quality, scalable, mobile application and backend infrastructure
Measure, analyze, and improve existing software to enhance performance and functionality
Exceptional verbal and written communication skills with the ability to convey complex concepts clearly and concisely
Partner with leaders across the business to align R&D organizational goals with business goals

Requirements

8+ years experience with B2B/B2C communications platforms or API driven business at scale with 5+ years as senior manager (VP, CDTO, R&D Director) managing global teams
8+ years of experience with both client and backend development (Java, C++, NodeJS, Kotlin, Swift, Objective-C)
In depth understanding of technical skills (iOS, Android, cloud system architecture, NoSQL databases, microservices architecture and continuous deployment) agile methodologies

Advantages

Experience with big data technologies & pipelines
Linux and server-side experience
Experience with serverless technologies
Knowledge of VoIP/WebRTC technologies
Understanding of Machine Learning and Deep Learning concepts and technology
In-depth knowledge of cryptography and security
Experience with Couchbase NoSQL DB
Russian language – Native/High level

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About

At Rakuten Viber, we connect people–no matter who they are, or where they are from. As a communication platform that connects hundreds of millions of people around the world, we know that the way people communicate changes on an almost daily basis. That’s why we dedicate ourselves to providing added value to communication — from private and group chats to audio and video calls to the ability to follow and contact brands, businesses and celebrities. Viber is an all-in-one platform for everything communications-based, and all Viber communications are protected by end-to-end encryption. Viber is part of the Rakuten Group, a world leader in e-commerce and financial services