How to Apply to DeNA

About DeNA

Application Process

1. 1
   Browse open roles at the official DeNA careers site at dena

   Browse open roles at the official DeNA careers site at dena.com/jp/recruit/ (Japanese) or dena.com/intl/recruit/ (English where available). The mid-career and new-graduate job listings route through HRMOS, the applicant tracking system operated by BizReach that powers a large share of mid-to-large Japanese employer ATS deployments. Most listings are posted in Japanese, with a meaningful subset of product, infrastructure, and data engineering roles also published in English.

2. 2
   Identify the right hiring track for your situation

   Identify the right hiring track for your situation. DeNA runs three distinct hiring tracks: 新卒採用 (new graduate, with a structured spring entry into the following April), キャリア採用 (mid-career, year-round), and an internship program. Mid-career is the dominant volume in 2026 and is what most international candidates will use. Within mid-career, roles are grouped by business unit (gaming, sports, healthcare, automotive, corporate functions) and by job family (engineering, product, design, business development, operations).

3. 3
   Read the job posting carefully and confirm the language and location requirement

   Read the job posting carefully and confirm the language and location requirements. The default working language at DeNA's Shibuya headquarters is Japanese, and the strong default expectation for most roles is business-level Japanese (JLPT N2 equivalent or higher). A subset of engineering, infrastructure, and product roles can accommodate English-primary candidates, but those exceptions are usually called out explicitly in the posting. If the posting is written only in Japanese, treat that as a strong signal that Japanese will be required day-to-day.

4. 4
   Apply directly through the HRMOS application form linked from the job posting

   Apply directly through the HRMOS application form linked from the job posting. You will create an HRMOS candidate account (separate from any DeNA-specific account), upload a resume and a 職務経歴書 (shokumu keirekisho, the Japanese career history document), and complete a structured set of fields covering desired role, current employment status, work authorization in Japan, expected compensation, and earliest possible start date. For roles posted only in Japanese, the application form itself will typically be in Japanese.

5. 5
   Expect an initial response window of one to three weeks

   Expect an initial response window of one to three weeks. DeNA's talent acquisition team is responsive by Japanese mid-to-large company standards, but volume varies sharply by business unit and role. Sports, healthcare, and high-priority engineering roles tend to move faster; legacy gaming roles and corporate functions can take longer. If you have not heard back after three weeks, a polite follow-up email through the HRMOS messaging interface is acceptable.

6. 6
   If your background passes the initial document screen (書類選考, shorui senkou), a r

   If your background passes the initial document screen (書類選考, shorui senkou), a recruiter from DeNA's people operations team will schedule a 30 to 45 minute introductory interview, typically by Zoom or Google Meet. This first conversation covers your motivation for joining DeNA, a high-level walkthrough of your career, your Japanese language ability if relevant to the role, your compensation expectations in Japanese yen, and your work authorization status. It is conversational and not a technical screen.

7. 7
   Successful candidates then move into a hiring-manager interview, typically 60 mi

   Successful candidates then move into a hiring-manager interview, typically 60 minutes by video. For engineering and product roles this is where you should expect substantive questions about your day-to-day craft, architecture decisions on prior projects, and your familiarity with the specific stacks and platforms in the posting. For sports, healthcare, or business development roles the hiring manager round focuses on domain experience, commercial judgment, and your understanding of the relevant Japanese market.

8. 8
   Engineering candidates typically face a coding or system design round, sometimes

   Engineering candidates typically face a coding or system design round, sometimes combined with the hiring manager round and sometimes separate. The coding portion is usually a live exercise in a shared editor (CoderPad or similar), focused on practical problem solving rather than competitive-programming trivia. System design rounds are common for senior engineers and probe trade-offs in scalability, data modeling, and operational concerns. DeNA engineers are pragmatic and prefer candidates who can reason about real-world constraints over candidates who can only recite textbook patterns.

9. 9
   Most loops include a cross-functional interview with one to three additional tea

   Most loops include a cross-functional interview with one to three additional team members or partner-team representatives. These rounds focus on collaboration style, how you handle disagreement, and how you communicate with non-engineering stakeholders. For senior roles, expect at least one round with a business unit executive (often a director or vice president) who will probe your strategic judgment and your fit with the unit's longer-term direction.

10. 10
    Final-round interviews for senior or strategically important roles can include a

    Final-round interviews for senior or strategically important roles can include a meeting with a member of DeNA's executive team, occasionally including the CEO for top-of-band hires given Tomoko Namba's hands-on involvement since her 2024 return. These conversations are direct, well-prepared, and focused on whether you understand the strategic reset and where you would contribute to it.

11. 11
    References are sometimes requested for senior roles but are less universal than

    References are sometimes requested for senior roles but are less universal than in U.S. processes. When requested, DeNA typically asks for one to three professional references and will contact them by phone or email. For mid-level individual contributor roles, references are often skipped entirely.

12. 12
    Offers are extended verbally by the recruiter, followed by a written offer lette

    Offers are extended verbally by the recruiter, followed by a written offer letter (内定通知書, naitei tsuuchisho) within several business days. Compensation is paid in Japanese yen and typically includes base salary on a 12-month or 16-month structure (depending on role band), a performance-linked bonus, restricted stock units for senior roles, comprehensive Japanese social insurance enrollment (健康保険, 厚生年金, 雇用保険, 労災), commuter allowance, and standard Japanese statutory leave plus DeNA-specific time-off policies. Stock-based compensation is more meaningful at senior bands and for roles in priority growth businesses.

13. 13
    Background checks and finalization of immigration paperwork (if applicable) clos

    Background checks and finalization of immigration paperwork (if applicable) close out the process. DeNA regularly sponsors Japanese work visas for international engineering and specialist hires, with the engineer/specialist in humanities/international services visa being the most common route. Typical processing takes one to three months depending on the candidate's nationality and Tokyo Immigration Bureau workload.

Resume Tips for DeNA

Interview Culture

What DeNA Looks For

• Genuine technical or domain craft. DeNA consistently hires for real depth — backend systems engineering, mobile platform expertise, data and machine learning rigor, sports analytics, healthcare regulatory knowledge, live-entertainment operations — over generalist breadth. Candidates who can demonstrate that they have built and operated something difficult tend to advance regardless of brand pedigree.
• Comfort with the Japanese working environment and Japanese language ability appropriate to the role. The default working language at Shibuya HQ is Japanese, and most teams operate primarily in Japanese even when they include English-speaking members. Engineering and infrastructure roles can sometimes accommodate English-primary candidates, but business, sports, healthcare, design, and product roles almost always expect business-level Japanese (JLPT N2 or higher in practice).
• Long-term orientation and commitment to the company's strategic direction. Tomoko Namba's 2024 return as CEO is explicitly framed as a strategic reset, and DeNA is hiring people who want to be part of a multi-year rebuild rather than people optimizing for the next two-year resume entry. Interviewers actively probe for that orientation, and short-term framing tends to underperform.
• High agency and ownership in ambiguous contexts. DeNA is a holding-style operator running a portfolio of businesses at very different stages of maturity — established legacy gaming, growing sports and entertainment, emerging healthcare, partnership-driven automotive — and individual contributors and managers alike are expected to push decisions forward without waiting for top-down direction. Passive descriptions of contributions in interviews tend to underperform.
• Track record of shipping consumer or platform products at scale, for relevant roles. Japanese consumer internet operates at significant scale (DeNA's services serve tens of millions of users across the portfolio) and the bar for production reliability, data privacy, and operational discipline is high. Candidates who have actually run something in production at meaningful scale outperform candidates who have only worked on prototypes or internal tools.
• Willingness to base in Tokyo or in Yokohama (for BayStars and stadium-adjacent roles). The vast majority of DeNA roles are on-site or hybrid at the Shibuya HQ or at Yokohama Stadium and adjacent BayStars facilities. Hybrid arrangements typically expect three or more days per week on-site, and fully remote roles are rare and tightly scoped to specific functions.
• Sports, live entertainment, healthcare, or automotive domain interest, for roles in those business units. The BayStars, SAKAI, MyAnyca, MYCODE, and KenCoM teams all hire people who have substantive personal or professional connection to their domains. Candidates whose only frame of reference is generic consumer product work consistently underperform candidates who can speak to why these specific businesses interest them.
• Cultural fit with a maturing organization that is actively repositioning. DeNA is no longer the early-2010s mobile gaming juggernaut, and it is also not a traditional Japanese conglomerate. Interviewers look for candidates who can operate well in that middle zone — comfortable with structure where it exists, willing to build it where it does not, and able to flex between formal Japanese business process and the more improvisational style of the company's growth-stage business units.

Open Positions

DeNA currently has 17 open positions.

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