Customer Support Lead, Stargate

Customer Support Lead, Stargate

Woven by Toyota is enabling Toyota's once-in-a-century transformation into a mobility company. Inspired by a legacy of innovating for the benefit of others, our mission is to challenge the current state of mobility through human-centric innovation—expanding what "mobility" means and how it serves society. Our work centers on four pillars: AD/ADAS, our autonomous driving and advanced driver assist technologies; Arene, our software development platform for software-defined vehicles; Woven City, a test course for mobility; and Cloud & AI, the digital infrastructure powering our collaborative foundation. Business-critical functions empower these teams to execute, and together, we're working toward one bold goal: a world with zero accidents and enhanced well-being for all.

Cloud & AI's Customer Support team plays a critical role in supporting our external customers, primarily software developers, who rely on Stargate, Toyota's pioneering software development platform, to build and ship high-quality automotive software. The team consists of support specialists and engineers distributed across multiple time zones. This role will oversee the day-to-day support delivery for Stargate and report directly to the Head of Customer Support. We are a hybrid team, and commuting to the office at least three days a week is required.

We're looking for a hands-on, technically fluent support leader who's passionate about helping software developers succeed. You thrive in fast-moving environments, know how to lead without needing explicit authority, and bring creativity and a passion for optimizing and automating processes wherever possible. You strike the right balance between overseeing daily support operations and driving critical cross-functional coordination.

You'll be responsible for the day-to-day success of the Stargate Support team, unblocking team members when needed, de-escalating complex customer situations, improving internal workflows and documentation, and enabling a team of contractors across global time zones to deliver the best support experience possible for our customers.

Responsibilities

• Oversee and coordinate all frontline support operations for our developer platform, supervising a growing, globally distributed team of around 10 contractors
• Act as the primary escalation point for critical customer issues, leading resolution efforts and working cross-functionally to de-escalate and close incidents effectively
• Provide hands-on technical support guidance, including troubleshooting, unblocking team members, and validating fixes using Git, GitHub, scripts, and other developer tools
• Extract and analyze support metrics, identify trends and areas for improvement, and report on SLA performance to management on a monthly basis
• Collaborate with engineering, product, and technical writing teams to address support gaps, improve knowledge bases and product documentation, and ensure support readiness for new feature releases

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in technical customer support within the software industry
• Proven experience leading support teams in multicultural environments, including supervising contractors across time zones, handling high-pressure escalations, and overseeing support budgets
• Hands-on experience with Git and GitHub, working knowledge of CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, and a fundamental understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps
• Ability to write simple Bash or Python scripts to extract, manipulate, and visualize data using REST APIs
• Strong focus on operationalizing new feature releases to ensure support teams have the tools and documentation needed to provide a consistent support experience
• Proficiency with support and engineering tools such as Slack, Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, GitHub, and Artifactory, with familiarity in cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Business-level English and Japanese language skills

Nice To Haves

• 2+ years of hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and working knowledge of Kubernetes
• Prior experience supporting software development teams in the automotive industry
• Strong customer empathy combined with a pragmatic ability to push back on out-of-scope requests
• Strategic thinker, able to identify and promptly escalate critical issues and make quick, tactical decisions during incidents
• Ability to influence without authority, especially in cross-functional and contractor-based teams

All interviews will be arranged via Google Meet, unless otherwise stated. The same job descriptions are available in both English and Japanese; therefore, we kindly ask that you apply to only one version. We kindly request that you submit your resume in English, if possible. However, Japanese resumes are also acceptable. Please note that, depending on the English proficiency requirements of the role, we may request an English version of your resume later in the process.

Competitive Salary - Based on experience

Work Hours - Flexible working time

Paid Holiday - 20 days per year (prorated)

Sick Leave - 6 days per year (prorated)

Holiday - Sat & Sun, Japanese National Holidays, and other days defined by our company

Japanese Social Insurance - Health Insurance, Pension, Workers' Comp, and Unemployment Insurance, Long-term care insurance

Housing Allowance

Retirement Benefits

Rental Cars Support

In-house Training Program (software study/language study)

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