Tomone Akashi | Employee Interviews

Building a world-class product.

Why an engineer aiming to grow in the AI era

chooses ABCD.

Engineer

Tomone Akashi

He led new development and system renewal projects as an in-house engineer at a systems integrator and a recruitment company, then joined ABCD. As an engineer on the product team, he now builds the systems that form the foundation of our deals while making sense of the unfamiliar world of international trade.

Logic worked backward from the ideal,and a vast design that does not chase short-term profit

Deliver an outstanding product built for growth on a global scale, and do it over the long term rather than a short span. I was drawn to that design philosophy and decided to join. I was convinced that in this environment I could grow in a bigger and more fundamental way.

ABCD's management logic, worked backward in fine detail from the goal it wants to reach, makes it possible to pursue a truly excellent product head-on and with consistency, aimed at growth on a global scale rather than near-term revenue. That felt like a field where I could keep taking on bigger challenges and growing as an engineer.

Connecting the dots in international trade,and building systems that create synergy

At ABCD I am an engineer on the product team, developing the data platform for our international trade system. The design philosophy, the technical level and the speed of improvement are better than I could have imagined in any of my previous jobs. There are things that are fascinating and things that are hard, but from the development roadmap to putting processes in place and how we work day to day, the people at ABCD move quickly and support each other extremely well.

On top of that, we sit close to the sales team, so the flow from a customer's problem to delivered value is shared with us in a tangible form, and I can genuinely feel that we are doing something clearly right and building something valuable. That said, designing these complex real-world operations so that they can be reproduced in any situation is not something you reach by reading documents. Learning an unfamiliar field the hard way and distilling it into a solid structure through cycles of real work makes for demanding but rewarding days.

Running cycles of failure and improvement for the future,and taking on a new way of building

The development style at ABCD is a clear break from conventional programming. I overhauled the experience and habits I had built up and switched from writing code myself to writing detailed specifications and directing AI. On that foundation, what I value most is putting intent and insight into words. Rather than copying existing patterns, I keep asking why a structure is the way it is and re-examine what it means. We run that back-and-forth at high speed through meticulous up-front design and frequent review cycles, which has improved our pace of iteration dramatically.

ABCD does not have the glittery atmosphere typical of startups. It is very calm, with a deep-rooted culture of turning anything into a defined process in advance. Many of our people have athletic backgrounds, the organization is genuinely tough, and we respect one another within good working relationships. We are looking for people with an unrelenting drive to improve, who can keep repeating failure and improvement for the sake of the future even through periods when productivity does not rise. If that sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.