About Nethermind
Nethermind is a blockchain research and software engineering company building high-performance infrastructure, security tooling, and cryptographic systems across the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond. We work closely with protocol teams, L2s, and ZK projects to help design, review, and secure cutting-edge decentralized systems.
About the role:
We are looking for a senior business development and operations lead with direct Japanese market experience in vending, convenience stores, payments, retail automation, unattended retail, kiosks, robotics, or adjacent machine-based commerce. This is an early, high-ownership role for someone who can help build a local market presence from the ground up.
You will help the company understand and enter the Japanese market by building relationships, identifying pilot opportunities, supporting local partner conversations, and translating market requirements into practical next steps.
This is a strategic commercial and operating role, not a generic sales role. The right candidate must understand how business relationships are built in Japan, how to work with large companies, and how to make a new technology concept credible to commercial and technical stakeholders.
Responsibilities:
- Own early business development for Japan.
- Map relevant customer, partner, and operator opportunities in vending, convenience retail, payments, automation, and self-service commerce.
- Build relationships with operators, retailers, technology partners, payment providers, distributors, automation companies, and strategic commercial partners.
- Identify pilot opportunities in vending, convenience-style automation, and related unattended retail environments.
- Work directly with the founder on local market development, partner strategy, positioning, and customer feedback.
- Adapt the company's product narrative for Japanese customers, partners, and technical stakeholders.
- Lead local meetings, demos, partner follow-up, and commercial conversations in Japanese.
- Translate customer and partner feedback into product, integration, and deployment requirements.
- Support planning for pilots, integrations, field testing, support expectations, and local operations.
- Help define what the company needs in order to operate credibly in Japan.
- Build the foundation for a future Japan team across sales, operations, partnerships, field deployment, and customer success.
Requirements:
Direct experience in at least one of the following is required:
- Japanese vending machine industry
- Japanese convenience store industry
- Convenience store automation
- Payments, cashless payments, merchant acquiring, or POS in Japan
- Retail automation
- Unattended retail
- Self-service kiosks
- Automated food, beverage, or retail machines
- Robotics or machine automation for commercial environments
- Consumer hardware or industrial hardware partnerships in Japan
- Japanese fluency required.
- Professional English required.
- Strong understanding of Japanese business culture, enterprise sales cycles, partner management, and relationship-building.
- Ability to communicate credibly with Japanese commercial partners, payment companies, technical teams, and executives.
- Ability to understand both commercial and technical discussions around machines, payments, service, inventory, operations, and customer experience.
- Willingness to travel frequently within Japan and occasionally internationally.
- Comfortable operating in an early-stage startup with high autonomy and limited structure.
- Strong follow-through, attention to detail, and ability to turn meetings into structured next steps.
Preferred experience:
- Experience working with Japanese vending companies, convenience store groups, payment companies, POS companies, retail automation providers, or related operators.
- Experience with cashless payments, loyalty, mobile wallets, POS systems, vending telemetry, or self-service retail infrastructure.
- Experience launching pilots or new technology partnerships with large Japanese companies.
- Experience with robotics, IoT, machine automation, smart retail, or industrial technology.
- Experience bridging Japanese companies with US or European startups.
- Experience building a local country operation or strategic partnership function from scratch.
Success outcomes:
- You build a practical understanding of the Japanese market and priority commercial opportunities.
- You identify high-priority partners, customers, and pilot opportunities.
- You secure quality meetings with relevant Japanese decision-makers.
- You help the company understand the local requirements for entering the market.
- You help move at least one serious opportunity toward a pilot, collaboration, or commercial next step.
- Over time, you help establish Japan as a credible and important market for the company.
Our Commitment to Diversity
At Nethermind, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all team members. We believe a variety of perspectives drives innovation and leads to better solutions for the blockchain community.
Ready to Join Us?
If you're passionate about blockchain and eager to make an impact, we’d love to hear from you. Click Apply for this job to start your journey with Nethermind.
