How to Apply to Kurly (Market Kurly)

11 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 6 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Kurly's careers portal is recruit.kurly.com, which redirects to kurly.career.greetinghr.com on the Greeting ATS — apply there directly, not via aggregators.
  • The company is Korean-language primary for application and interviews, but more English-friendly than a chaebol — especially at senior technical and leadership levels.
  • Kurly competes with Coupang but does not try to match Coupang's scale, speed, or pay. It competes on curation, taste, and quality of engineering craft — optimize your application for those axes.
  • Post-2022 failed IPO, the culture has tilted firmly toward profitability and sustainable growth. Candidates who can think in unit economics outperform pure-growth candidates.
  • The 경력기술서 (career narrative) is the single most underinvested application artifact for foreign and new-to-Korea applicants — write it as a story with numbers.
  • MD (merchandising / 상품기획) is Kurly's defining discipline — if you are applying there, your portfolio of sourced products is your résumé.
  • Engineering hiring is strong and deep — read the helloworld.kurly.com dev blog, reference specific posts, and expect domain-heavy system design questions.
  • Beauty Kurly and same-day-delivery expansion outside Seoul are the two biggest 2026 growth bets — roles tied to those initiatives are the most dynamic.
  • Expect 3–4 interview rounds over 3–6 weeks, with the working-level round (실무 면접) being the decisive one.
  • Salary is negotiable, especially for senior tech and MD; equity is available at senior+ levels; liquidity depends on Kurly's eventual re-filed IPO.

About Kurly (Market Kurly)

Kurly Inc. (주식회사 컬리), operator of Market Kurly (마켓컬리) and Beauty Kurly (뷰티컬리), is one of the most culturally distinctive employers in Korean commerce. Founded in 2014 by Sophie Kim (김슬아) — a Wellesley graduate with stints at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, Temasek and Bain — the company invented the South Korean '새벽배송' (Saebyeok Baesong / Dawn Delivery) category by promising that orders placed by 11 PM would arrive before 7 AM the next morning, fully cold-chain managed, in recyclable purple packaging. That single operational idea turned a curated food catalog into a lifestyle brand that middle-class Seoul households now treat as a utility. Headquartered in Gangnam-gu (Yeoksam, 역삼), Seoul, Kurly employs roughly 2,000 full-time staff across corporate, engineering, MD (merchandising), marketing, design, and platform-security functions, plus several thousand warehouse and last-mile partners across its fulfillment centers in Gimpo (김포), Songpa (송파), Pyeongtaek (평택), and Changwon (창원). At its 2022 peak the company was valued at roughly KRW 4 trillion (approximately USD 3.3 billion) and filed for a KOSPI IPO — which it ultimately withdrew in early 2023 as the Korean venture market cratered. Since then Kurly has been on a very visible, very public march toward profitability: headcount discipline, SKU curation, automated fulfillment, and a 2024 strategic investment from SK Square (via Anchor Equity Partners-aligned vehicles) that gave it fresh runway without forcing a down-round IPO. The culture that results is distinctive: Kurly is not a chaebol, not a Coupang-style scale-at-all-costs rocketship, and not a pre-product-market-fit Silicon Valley clone. It behaves more like a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods with a Stripe-quality tech stack underneath — product-obsessed MDs curating every SKU in person, paired with engineers and data scientists building demand-forecasting and cold-chain optimization systems that keep waste rates far below industry norms. If you are drawn to craft-driven product work, you will feel at home. If you want hyper-scale chaos, Coupang pays more and hires faster. Kurly's current north star is proving that a premium, curated, profitability-first grocery model can survive and expand — into Beauty Kurly (now a material revenue line covering cosmetics, skincare, and lifestyle goods), into non-Seoul metros via expanded same-day delivery, and into enterprise-grade logistics automation. For engineers, MDs, designers, and operators who want to ship for an attentive Korean consumer base that notices packaging, ripeness, and timing, Kurly is one of the few remaining places in Korean commerce where 'taste' is still treated as a first-class engineering input.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Step 1

    Step 1 — Start at recruit.kurly.com, which immediately redirects to Kurly's live careers portal at kurly.career.greetinghr.com. This is hosted on Greeting (greetinghr.com), the same Korean HR-tech ATS used by Toss spinoffs, Musinsa, and dozens of other mid-sized Seoul tech companies. Do NOT apply via LinkedIn, Wanted, Saramin, or JobKorea reposts — those are syndicated listings, and recruiters triage the native Greeting pipeline first. If a role is not live on the Greeting site, it is effectively closed.

  2. 2
    Step 2

    Step 2 — Pick the right category. Kurly groups postings by (a) 직군 (job family): 개발 (development), 데이터 (data), 인프라 (infrastructure), 보안 (security), MD (merchandising), 마케팅 (marketing), 디자인/컨텐츠, 인사 (HR), 경영기획 (strategy), 커뮤니케이션 (PR), FC기획, SCM, EHS, 영업, 고객서비스, and 설비운영, and (b) 고용형태 (employment type): 정규직 (full-time), 계약직 (contract). Most postings are 경력 (mid-to-senior, 3–12 years) — Kurly hires relatively few 신입 (new grads) and almost never runs cohort-based gongchae (공채) like a chaebol. Pick by 직군 first, location second.

  3. 3
    Step 3

    Step 3 — Register a Greeting account with a Korean mobile number or email. Greeting uniquely supports 한국어 first but has a partial English toggle. The application form asks for 이력서 (resume), 경력기술서 (career description — a narrative of what you actually did, not a bullet list), and 포트폴리오 (portfolio — required for designers, MDs, and marketers; optional for engineers but strongly appreciated as a GitHub or tech blog link).

  4. 4
    Step 4

    Step 4 — Write the 경력기술서 as if you were explaining your work to a skeptical MD. This is the single document most foreign applicants underinvest in. Korean hiring managers at Kurly want to see impact framed through business metrics: 매출 (revenue), 전환율 (conversion), GMV, 재고회전율 (inventory turnover), 폐기율 (waste rate), P1 incident count, SLO delta. A bullet list of responsibilities will be ignored. A 2–3 page narrative with numbers will get a phone screen.

  5. 5
    Step 5

    Step 5 — Submit and expect a 2–3 week quiet period. Greeting will email updates — 서류전형 결과 (resume screening result), 면접 일정 (interview scheduling) — in Korean. If you pass screening, you enter a 3–4 round process: (1) 인사담당자 전화 인터뷰 (recruiter phone screen, ~30 min, in Korean unless you flag otherwise at application time), (2) 실무진 면접 (hands-on / working-level interview with your would-be team, ~60–90 min, technical for eng/data and case-based for MD/marketing), (3) 임원 면접 (executive interview, values-heavy, often with a C-level for senior hires), and for tech roles (4) a live or take-home coding/system-design component.

  6. 6
    Step 6

    Step 6 — Reference check, offer (연봉협상 / salary negotiation), and onboarding. Kurly negotiates — unlike many Korean employers, base salary bands have visible flex, especially for senior tech and MD roles. Expect stock options at senior+ levels (currently private equity, liquidity depends on Kurly's eventual re-filed IPO). Onboarding is 'Kurly Way' orientation plus a warehouse visit — every corporate hire, including engineers, walks at least one fulfillment center shift so they understand where the purple boxes actually come from.

  7. 7
    Step 7

    Step 7 — For questions, contact [email protected]. For FC (fulfillment center) roles specifically — packers, pickers, automation operators — there is a separate hourly hiring channel at the physical center level; corporate Greeting handles only salaried positions.

Resume Tips for Kurly (Market Kurly)

recommended

Lead with a Korean-language résumé if you can

Lead with a Korean-language résumé if you can. Kurly reviews both KR and EN, but hiring managers read Korean faster and more comprehensively. If your Korean is not business-fluent, submit a clean English CV and a short Korean cover note (자기소개서) explaining why Kurly specifically — generic cover letters are visibly penalized.

recommended

Use Kurly's own vocabulary

Use Kurly's own vocabulary. Read 'Kurly History' and 'Kurly Culture' on the Greeting careers site and mirror language like 진정성 (authenticity), 고객 최우선 (customer-first), 큐레이션 (curation), 상품성 (product-merit). This is not corporate cosplay — it is how internal evaluation forms are actually worded.

recommended

For MD candidates (merchandising): your portfolio IS your resume

For MD candidates (merchandising): your portfolio IS your resume. Include 3–5 product stories — pick a SKU you sourced or launched, describe the vendor relationship, your quality-gate criteria, launch GMV, sell-through, reorder rate. Kurly MDs are evaluated on 안목 (discernment), not volume. Do not list 500 SKUs. List 5 with depth.

recommended

For engineers: link to your GitHub, a Velog or Medium tech blog, or the Kurly de

For engineers: link to your GitHub, a Velog or Medium tech blog, or the Kurly dev blog's competitor (woowahan, toss tech, daangn). Kurly's own dev team publishes at helloworld.kurly.com — read it, reference specific posts in your application to demonstrate you know what the team actually builds.

recommended

Quantify in Korean business units

Quantify in Korean business units. Use 억원 (100M KRW) for revenue, not USD unless you previously worked abroad. Use 건/월 (transactions/month) or DAU/MAU for product metrics. Using only dollar figures flags you as a non-localized applicant even if your Korean is fluent.

recommended

Emphasize cold-chain, grocery, or premium-CPG experience if you have it

Emphasize cold-chain, grocery, or premium-CPG experience if you have it. Kurly values domain knowledge far more than a typical Korean tech company — a food scientist who learned Python will often beat a CS grad with no CPG experience for data roles on the MD-facing teams.

recommended

Keep length at 2–3 pages for 경력 roles

Keep length at 2–3 pages for 경력 roles. Korean hiring convention expects more detail than a US one-pager but less than a European 5-page CV. Include 학력 (education), 경력 (work history in reverse chronological order with company-size context), 자격증 (certifications — TOEIC/OPIc scores help for global-facing roles), and a short 프로젝트/성과 (projects / achievements) section.

recommended

Flag English fluency explicitly for senior roles

Flag English fluency explicitly for senior roles. Kurly's leadership (Sophie Kim, CFO, several VPs) operates bilingually and expects senior hires to handle investor-facing and vendor-facing English. Junior and mid-level roles are Korean-primary with no English requirement.

recommended

Do not submit a photo by default

Do not submit a photo by default. Korean convention traditionally included a 증명사진, but Kurly — like most newer Korean tech — has moved to blind résumés for screening. If the Greeting form does not request one, do not attach one.

recommended

For design candidates, include case studies showing both mobile and print/packag

For design candidates, include case studies showing both mobile and print/packaging work. Kurly is one of the rare Korean tech companies where packaging design, editorial content, and product photography are first-class design disciplines alongside app UI. Showing range will open more doors.

ATS System: Greeting (그리팅) by Duckbill

Kurly uses Greeting (greetinghr.com), a Korean-built applicant tracking system from Duckbill that has become the default ATS for Seoul-based tech startups and scale-ups. Kurly's careers domain recruit.kurly.com redirects to kurly.career.greetinghr.com, which is where all active postings live. Greeting is Korean-first but offers a partial English UI toggle. Unlike Greenhouse or Workday, Greeting has relatively loose keyword-matching on the automated side — the heavy triage is human. However, its application form is strict about required fields, especially 경력기술서 (career description narrative) for mid-senior roles. Files are accepted as PDF, DOCX, and HWP (Hangul Word Processor — a Korean format; PDF is safest for foreign applicants). The portal supports Korean mobile verification for account creation and will send all status updates via Korean-language email.

  • Apply directly at kurly.career.greetinghr.com — any listing on LinkedIn, Wanted, Saramin, or JobKorea ultimately lands in the same Greeting pipeline, and applying natively gets your file reviewed first.
  • Fill every optional field on the Greeting form. Unlike Workday, Greeting does not auto-parse résumés heavily — information you skip is information the recruiter does not see.
  • Submit a PDF, not HWP, unless you are confident in Hangul Word Processor formatting across devices. Name the file [Name]_[Role]_이력서.pdf in that order — Korean recruiters sort by filename.
  • Use Korean Unicode throughout — no romanized 'Hankook' where '한국' belongs. Greeting's search indexing handles Korean but not transliteration.
  • If you need to re-apply to a different role, create a new application rather than editing the old one. Greeting keeps a per-posting record and recruiters cross-check.
  • Status emails come in Korean — '서류전형 결과 안내' means resume screening result, '면접 일정 조율' means interview scheduling. Set a translation tool or Gmail auto-translate so you do not miss a window.
  • There is no third-party assessment tier (no HireVue, no Codility by default) — all evaluation happens inside Kurly's own process. Some tech teams administer a take-home coding challenge via a shared GitHub repo or Programmers.co.kr link, separate from Greeting.

Interview Culture

Kurly interviews sit in a distinct spot between the formality of a Korean chaebol and the chaos of a Silicon Valley startup.

Expect 3–4 rounds over 3–6 weeks. The 실무진 면접 (working-level interview) is the make-or-break round: your would-be team lead and 1–2 peers will interview you for 60–90 minutes, usually in Korean, with specific scenario questions drawn from actual operational challenges. For MDs, expect to be handed a real or realistic product category ('우리가 지금 유기농 두부 카테고리를 확장하려는데 어떻게 접근하시겠어요?' — 'We are expanding the organic tofu category, how would you approach it?') and graded on your reasoning, vendor discovery instincts, and ability to talk credibly about margin, shelf life, and customer appeal. For engineers, expect system-design questions rooted in Kurly's actual domain — cold-chain inventory reconciliation, real-time order allocation across fulfillment centers, demand forecasting for fresh produce with 24-hour shelf lives. Live coding is common at the Commerce Platform and Tech teams; data roles often include a SQL and ML-case round. Dress code is business casual — a blazer and clean shirt is safe, a full suit is unnecessary. English is tolerated at senior levels (Sophie Kim and several VPs interview bilingually), but mid-level candidates should expect and prepare for Korean-primary interviews even if they flagged English proficiency. Values-based questioning anchors to the 'Kurly Way': 고객 최우선 (customer first), 진정성 (authenticity), 큐레이션 (curation), 성장 (growth). Candidates who have specific stories about putting a customer first at cost, or saying no to a product that did not meet quality bars, outperform candidates with generic leadership narratives. The executive interview (4th round) is shorter and more taste-based — expect conversational questions about why Kurly over Coupang, what you buy on the app today, what SKU or feature you would change. Saying 'I do not currently shop on Kurly' is a disqualifier; spend a month using the app before applying. Salary negotiation happens after the final round with HR, not with the hiring manager. Offer windows are typically 1–2 weeks; extensions are possible but require a legitimate competing offer, not a fishing expedition. Background and reference checks are standard for 경력 (experienced) hires and can extend the timeline by another 2 weeks.

What Kurly (Market Kurly) Looks For

  • Taste (안목) — the single most Kurly-specific evaluation axis. Can you look at a product, a vendor, a piece of packaging, an app screen, a data visualization, and know intuitively whether it meets Kurly's bar? This is culturally closer to Muji, Aesop, or Apple hiring than to Coupang or Amazon.
  • Craft over volume — evidence that you do few things well rather than many things at scale. For engineers: one deeply shipped system matters more than ten half-built services. For MDs: one category you grew profitably beats ten you touched.
  • Customer-obsession that costs something — stories where you argued for a harder or more expensive path because it was right for the customer, not because it optimized a short-term metric.
  • Operational literacy — understanding the supply chain, the cold chain, the fulfillment reality behind the app. Kurly actively distrusts candidates who treat the product as pure software.
  • Korean-language business fluency for most roles, with a clear carve-out for senior technical, investor-facing, and global-expansion roles where English bilingualism is the asset.
  • Profitability instinct. Post-2023 Kurly screens hard for candidates who think in unit economics, not just GMV or headcount growth. 'How would you cut cost without cutting quality?' is a live interview question.
  • Low ego in cross-functional collaboration. MDs work hand-in-glove with supply chain and marketing; engineers work hand-in-glove with MDs and data scientists. Candidates who described themselves as 'full-stack problem solvers' with specific examples outperform specialist silos.
  • Resilience in a post-IPO-withdrawal culture. Kurly employees lived through a very public valuation reset. Candidates who talk openly about learning from downturns and reframing growth expectations tend to resonate.
  • Domain affinity — demonstrable love for food, cosmetics, or the specific vertical you are applying into. 'I just want to work at a good tech company' is a weaker signal than 'I have been cooking weekly from Market Kurly for two years and here is the category gap I see.'

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Kurly hire non-Korean speakers?
Selectively, yes. Senior engineering, data, investor-relations, and global-expansion roles regularly hire English-primary bilinguals, and leadership (including CEO Sophie Kim) operates bilingually. However, for mid-level MD, marketing, operations, design, and most 경력 technical roles, business-level Korean is effectively required because day-to-day Slack, documents, vendor calls, and internal meetings all run in Korean. If your Korean is intermediate, target global/senior tech roles and flag your bilingual strength explicitly in the application cover note.
What ATS does Kurly use and is it different from Coupang or Naver?
Kurly uses Greeting (그리팅) by Duckbill, hosted at kurly.career.greetinghr.com. This is the same Korean-native ATS used by many Seoul mid-sized tech scale-ups. It is distinct from Coupang (which uses a custom Greenhouse-like stack) and Naver (which runs its own proprietary 네이버채용 portal). Greeting is Korean-first, PDF-friendly, and has lighter automated keyword filtering than Greenhouse or Workday — the human recruiter review is the primary screening gate.
How does Kurly's compensation compare to Coupang?
Coupang pays more cash. Kurly pays competitive mid-market base salaries by Seoul tech standards — typically 15–25% below Coupang for equivalent senior tech roles, roughly on par for MD and marketing roles, and often with a different equity mix (private-company stock options at senior+ levels versus Coupang's public NYSE RSUs). Candidates choose Kurly over Coupang for culture, curation, craft, and sustainable pace rather than for cash comp. Negotiation exists and senior hires with competing offers regularly close the gap.
What does Dawn Delivery (새벽배송) have to do with the jobs?
Dawn Delivery is the defining operational product of the company, which means it shapes a huge share of the engineering, data, SCM, FC, and MD roles. Demand forecasting must be accurate to the SKU by 11 PM so warehouses can pick and dispatch overnight. Cold-chain routing has to survive a 7 AM SLA. MDs must source products that survive dawn delivery without quality loss. Even if you are applying to marketing or design, expect interview questions to probe how well you understand the 11 PM cutoff and the 7 AM promise — it is the backbone of almost every product decision.
Did the failed 2022 IPO affect hiring and culture?
Yes, materially. Kurly filed for a KOSPI IPO in 2022 at a valuation peak of roughly KRW 4 trillion (USD 3.3B), then withdrew the filing in early 2023 as public markets repriced growth tech. The company tightened headcount, slowed non-core hiring, pushed harder on profitability, and accepted a 2024 strategic investment led by SK Square to extend runway. Culturally, this means Kurly today is more disciplined, more unit-economics focused, and less 'growth at all costs' than in 2021. Candidates who resonate with sustainable growth, operational craft, and profitability thrive; candidates who want hyper-scale chaos should look at Coupang.
What is Beauty Kurly and is it hiring?
Beauty Kurly (뷰티컬리) is Kurly's cosmetics and beauty-goods vertical, launched in 2022 and now a material revenue line representing cleanly defined premium-tier skincare, makeup, and lifestyle SKUs. It has its own MD, marketing, CRM, and design teams that operate semi-independently inside the Kurly platform, and it is one of the most actively hiring business units in 2026. If you have cosmetics, skincare, K-beauty brand, or LVMH-style prestige-retail experience, Beauty Kurly is the most direct entry point.
What happens to the IPO? Should I care as a candidate?
Kurly has publicly signaled it intends to re-attempt a KOSPI listing when market conditions support a valuation that respects the 2024 SK Square round. There is no confirmed timeline as of 2026, and no internal roadmap leaks suggest imminent refiling. Practically for candidates: assume your stock options will be liquid only on a multi-year horizon, negotiate base and bonus as if equity were illiquid, and view options as upside rather than core comp. Candidates who join for stock-option timing usually end up disappointed; candidates who join for the work do better.
Are warehouse and fulfillment center roles hired through the same process?
No. Corporate and salaried roles (including FC planning, FC engineering, automation, and EHS management) are hired through the Greeting ATS at kurly.career.greetinghr.com. Hourly and contract roles at the fulfillment centers themselves — pickers, packers, cold-storage operators — are hired locally at the FC level (Gimpo, Songpa, Pyeongtaek, Changwon) through separate site-specific recruiting channels, often via Saramin, Albamon, or direct physical recruiting at the centers. If you want a corporate FC role, apply via Greeting; if you want an hourly role, contact the specific FC directly.
What engineering stack does Kurly use?
Backend is primarily Kotlin and Java on Spring, with Python used heavily for data, ML, and demand-forecasting pipelines. Frontend is a mix of React and Vue depending on team, with TypeScript standard. Infrastructure runs on AWS and GCP with Kubernetes. Data stack includes Kafka, Airflow, Snowflake/BigQuery, and in-house feature stores for recommendation and forecasting. Search is Elasticsearch/OpenSearch. The dev blog at helloworld.kurly.com is the canonical public source of architecture posts — reading 5–10 recent posts before interviewing materially raises your signal.
How long does the hiring process take end-to-end?
Plan for 3 to 6 weeks from application to offer for most salaried roles. Resume screening is 1–2 weeks, working-level interview scheduling is another 1–2 weeks, executive interview and reference checks add another 1–2 weeks, and salary negotiation and offer letter typically close within 1 week after final interview. Senior executive roles and roles requiring international relocation can run 8–12 weeks. The process moves faster than chaebol (Samsung, LG, SK take 2–4 months) and slower than pure Silicon Valley startups.
Is relocation to Seoul supported?
Relocation support exists for senior technical and leadership hires, typically covering visa sponsorship (E-7 or D-8 category), shipping allowance, and 1–2 months of temporary housing. It is not standard for mid-level or junior hires. If you are applying from outside Korea and need visa sponsorship, flag it in the application cover note and target senior or specialist roles where the business case for international sourcing is clear.

Open Positions

Kurly (Market Kurly) currently has 6 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 6 open positions at Kurly (Market Kurly)

Related Resources

Related Articles

Sources

  1. Kurly Careers Portal (official, live) —
  2. Kurly Careers Recruiting Listings —
  3. Kurly Recruit Redirect (recruit.kurly.com) —
  4. Kurly Engineering Blog — Hello World —
  5. Kurly Newsroom (official corporate communications) —
  6. Kurly LinkedIn Company Page —
  7. Greeting ATS by Duckbill (ATS platform provider) —
  8. Kurly Privacy Policy for Career Applicants —