J-1 Visa Platform Engineer Jobs
Platform Engineer roles in the U.S. typically fall under the J-1 visa Trainee or Intern category, depending on your career stage. Designated sponsor organizations issue your DS-2019 and oversee compliance, while your U.S. employer serves as the host. No lottery, no annual cap, and direct sponsorship pathways exist for qualified engineers.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community.
Rakuten Advertising provides advertising technology and consumer insights to the world’s leading brands and retailers. Working with agencies and brands around the world, Rakuten Advertising unites technology, client strategy and consumer insights to deliver advertising experiences that drive increased brand awareness and marketing performance. With access to Rakuten’s diverse media properties and audiences, combined with an award-winning performance network and proprietary consumer research, Rakuten Advertising creates the right conditions to reach new customers and sustain long-lasting loyalty.
JOB SUMMARY
We are seeking a Graduate Intern to join our team and work on building an AI-powered, agent-based Incident & On-Call Copilot inside Backstage. This role focuses on integrating AI agents into a real developer platform Backstage to help engineers during incidents by correlating service metadata, incident context, recent deployments, runbooks and all within Backstage.
The Intern Experience: At Rakuten, we pride ourselves on giving interns a genuine, immersive experience that has a direct impact on company objectives. You will do meaningful work, and with us, you'll be a true member of the team. We are also invested in your growth as an individual and professional. That's why you can expect curated events such as professional development workshops, interactions with Rakuten leadership, and relationship building opportunities with other interns and professionals at the company. You can visit our company website and our Muse profile, to learn more about Rakuten's culture and values, as well as hear from previous interns.
INTERNSHIP PROJECT OVERVIEW
Project: Agent-Based Incident Copilot for Backstage
Engineers responding to incidents often lose valuable time manually gathering context from multiple tools such as logs, metrics, incident management systems, CI/CD and runbooks. This project addresses that challenge by embedding an interactive AI-powered incident copilot directly inside Backstage. The copilot acts as a context-aware AI agent that engineers can interact with using natural language to quickly understand what is happening, what has changed recently, and how similar incidents were resolved in the past.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Backstage plugin development (frontend & backend)
- AI agent workflows using LangChain, AutoGen, or similar SDKs
- Prompt design and AI interaction patterns
- Read-only integrations with logs, incident, CI/CD and documentation systems
- Responsible AI guardrails
QUALIFICATIONS
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- Master’s in computer science or related field
- Programming fundamentals in JavaScript or TypeScript, Python
- Basic understanding of LLMs and AI agents
- Foundational knowledge of Lang Chain, AutoGen or similar Agent SDKs
- Familiarity with Git
NICE TO HAVE:
- React or Node.js exposure
- Cloud platform familiarity (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Interest in incident management or SRE
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- Degree in progress
SUCCESS CRITERIA:
- Deliver an interactive AI Incident Copilot in Backstage
- Demonstrate safe and responsible AI usage
- Present MVP to engineering leadership
At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the hourly rate for this role will be between $35 - $50 per hour. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location.
FIVE PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.
- Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
- Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
- Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
- Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
- Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team
Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.
INTRODUCTION
Rakuten International is a division of Rakuten Group, Inc., a Japanese global technology leader in services that empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Headquartered in San Mateo, California with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, the Rakuten International business portfolio includes market leaders in e-commerce, digital marketing, advertising, communications and entertainment. We create products and services that provide exceptional value by aligning members and the businesses that want to engage them in a shared community.
Rakuten Advertising provides advertising technology and consumer insights to the world’s leading brands and retailers. Working with agencies and brands around the world, Rakuten Advertising unites technology, client strategy and consumer insights to deliver advertising experiences that drive increased brand awareness and marketing performance. With access to Rakuten’s diverse media properties and audiences, combined with an award-winning performance network and proprietary consumer research, Rakuten Advertising creates the right conditions to reach new customers and sustain long-lasting loyalty.
JOB SUMMARY
We are seeking a Graduate Intern to join our team and work on building an AI-powered, agent-based Incident & On-Call Copilot inside Backstage. This role focuses on integrating AI agents into a real developer platform Backstage to help engineers during incidents by correlating service metadata, incident context, recent deployments, runbooks and all within Backstage.
The Intern Experience: At Rakuten, we pride ourselves on giving interns a genuine, immersive experience that has a direct impact on company objectives. You will do meaningful work, and with us, you'll be a true member of the team. We are also invested in your growth as an individual and professional. That's why you can expect curated events such as professional development workshops, interactions with Rakuten leadership, and relationship building opportunities with other interns and professionals at the company. You can visit our company website and our Muse profile, to learn more about Rakuten's culture and values, as well as hear from previous interns.
INTERNSHIP PROJECT OVERVIEW
Project: Agent-Based Incident Copilot for Backstage
Engineers responding to incidents often lose valuable time manually gathering context from multiple tools such as logs, metrics, incident management systems, CI/CD and runbooks. This project addresses that challenge by embedding an interactive AI-powered incident copilot directly inside Backstage. The copilot acts as a context-aware AI agent that engineers can interact with using natural language to quickly understand what is happening, what has changed recently, and how similar incidents were resolved in the past.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Backstage plugin development (frontend & backend)
- AI agent workflows using LangChain, AutoGen, or similar SDKs
- Prompt design and AI interaction patterns
- Read-only integrations with logs, incident, CI/CD and documentation systems
- Responsible AI guardrails
QUALIFICATIONS
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
- Master’s in computer science or related field
- Programming fundamentals in JavaScript or TypeScript, Python
- Basic understanding of LLMs and AI agents
- Foundational knowledge of Lang Chain, AutoGen or similar Agent SDKs
- Familiarity with Git
NICE TO HAVE:
- React or Node.js exposure
- Cloud platform familiarity (GCP, AWS, Azure)
- Interest in incident management or SRE
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- Degree in progress
SUCCESS CRITERIA:
- Deliver an interactive AI Incident Copilot in Backstage
- Demonstrate safe and responsible AI usage
- Present MVP to engineering leadership
At the time of posting, Rakuten expects the hourly rate for this role will be between $35 - $50 per hour. Individual compensation will vary based on job-related factors, including the skills, qualifications, and experience of the successful candidate as well as business need and geographic location.
FIVE PRINCIPLES FOR SUCCESS
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.
- Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen
- Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best
- Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory
- Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile
- Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team
Rakuten provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type. Rakuten considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, provincial or local laws.
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Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding J-1 Visa Sponsorship as a Platform Engineer
Document your platform engineering credentials precisely
Your DS-2019 training plan must map your degree and prior experience directly to the platform engineering work you'll do in the U.S. Vague descriptions of cloud, infrastructure, or DevOps tasks get flagged by designated sponsors during review.
Distinguish Intern from Trainee before applying
If you're currently enrolled in a degree program, J-1 Intern is your category. If you've graduated and have relevant work experience, Trainee applies. Targeting roles listed under the wrong category wastes application cycles with the designated sponsor.
Search Migrate Mate for J-1-aligned platform roles
Use Migrate Mate to filter for U.S. employers that have hosted J-1 exchange visitors in technical roles. Targeting host organizations already familiar with the DS-2019 process shortens your timeline and reduces back-and-forth with the designated sponsor.
Verify your host employer's E-Verify enrollment status
Many designated sponsors require host employers to be enrolled in E-Verify before issuing a DS-2019. Confirm this during your offer negotiation, not after signing, since unenrolled employers may need weeks to complete E-Verify registration.
Align your training plan to a specific SOC code
Designated sponsors map your J-1 training program to a Standard Occupational Classification code. For platform engineering, confirm whether your offer letter and duties align with the correct SOC before the sponsor drafts your DS-2019 to avoid revisions.
Flag the two-year home residency requirement early
Some J-1 Trainee programs trigger a two-year home-country residency requirement based on government funding or your nationality's skills list. Identify this before accepting an offer, since it affects your H-1B visa or green card eligibility afterward.
Platform Engineer J-1 Visa: Frequently Asked Questions
Which J-1 program category applies to platform engineers?
It depends on your current status. If you're a student still enrolled in a degree program, the J-1 Intern category covers platform engineering placements. If you've graduated and have relevant professional experience in infrastructure, cloud, or DevOps, the J-1 Trainee category applies. Your designated sponsor organization, not your employer, determines which category fits and issues your DS-2019 accordingly.
Who actually sponsors my J-1 visa as a platform engineer?
The visa sponsor is a U.S. Department of State-designated organization, such as IIE, Cultural Vistas, or CIEE, not your employer. Your employer is the host organization. The designated sponsor issues your DS-2019, approves your training plan, and monitors compliance throughout the program. Employers who are unfamiliar with this structure sometimes incorrectly describe themselves as your visa sponsor.
How do I find U.S. employers who have hosted J-1 platform engineers before?
Migrate Mate lets you search for U.S. employers with a track record of hosting J-1 exchange visitors in technical roles. Host employers already experienced with the DS-2019 process and training plan requirements move faster and make fewer administrative errors during onboarding. Targeting experienced hosts reduces delays between your offer and program start.
Does the J-1 Trainee category cover remote or hybrid platform engineering roles?
Designated sponsors generally require a clearly defined host worksite for J-1 Trainee programs, since the training plan is tied to a specific work environment and supervisor. Fully remote arrangements are rarely approved. Hybrid roles may qualify if the primary worksite is fixed and the sponsor can confirm adequate on-site supervision and structured training activities.
What is the two-year home residency requirement and does it affect platform engineers?
Some J-1 participants must return to their home country for two years after their program before applying for H-1B, L-1 visa, or immigrant visas. Whether this applies depends on your home country's designation on the State Department skills list or whether your program was government-funded. Platform engineers should clarify this with their designated sponsor before accepting an offer, since it directly affects long-term U.S. career planning.