I'm Takashi Someda, Hacarus CTO.

As of late, Hacarus has been committed to its recruitment by meeting many people. We are truly grateful for the humbling opportunity to explain to the many people that we meet about what Hacarus does.

In a more formal manner, I'm here to speak about the challenges Hacarus presently faces and undertakes in its engineering environment as well as the company explanations covered during an interview.

I'd be more than glad to reach people who are interested, even a little, in machine learning or sparse modeling and working in Kansai.

Here's an updated explanation on business and development at Hacarus:

About Hacarus

Company Overview

Based in Kyoto, Hacarus is a startup company with strengths in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Established in 2014, Hacarus began as a healthcare application company utilizing IoT. At that time, we tried challenging crowdfunding for a product we had developed on Makuake.

At that time, we had been developing products using machine learning technology and had been notified by companies in the medical and industrial field that our technology could be used as a strength in those fields.

Thus, as of present, we are expanding our AI/data analysis business utilizing our specialization in sparse modeling with a focus on medical, drug discovery, and industrial fields.

Performance in Fundraising

Not only is Hacarus receiving fundraising from a venture capital, but also receives funds from operating companies and creates partnerships on business developments. Regarding medical and drug development on-site operations, there is a lot of data that you cannot easily get your hands on (naturally, dealing with this data requires much caution). Through these collaborative fundraisers mentioned above, we would like to speed up solution development from here on out.

Development Environment at Hacarus

Utilized Programs in the Development Environment

The following are used by all development members:

• Docker
• Git
• Jenkins

Software Engineers

• Python 3.x
• • Flask / SQLAlchemy
• Swift (for iOS)
• Kotlin / Java (for Android)
• Vue.js / ReactJS (for frontend)

Originally, frontend used ReactJS. However, recently, making ends meet through the use of vue.js in light projects have increasingly become a trend at Hacarus. Also, when it comes to Python, we also have staff who take the stand during PyCon related events. Between software engineers and data scientists, Python is the common programming language.

Data Scientists

• Python 3.x
• • pandas / NumPy / SciPy / scikit-learn / scikit-image / seaborn / opencv / spm-image ( 自社開発 OSS )
• Jupyter

In data analysis, we also use the so-called Python + Jupyter and in relation to the project content, other OSS are joined together and used in one's own work.

Embedded Software Engineers

• C / C++
• Xilinx SDx
• • Xilinx inc. FPGA Integrated Development Environment
• OpenWRT Linux / Alpine Linux / Ubuntu (for the embedded environment)

If running on Linux, Python is run on Docker. The FPGA system writes code in C/C++ written code, and performs high-level synthesis in SDx.

Service Base Infrastructure

• Ansible
• Fabric
• Terraform
• Serverspec
• AWS
• • ELB / EC2 / Cloudfront / S3 / Route53 / Cloudwatch / SES / ElastiCache / MySQL RDS / Lambda / SageMaker etc.

Communication Tools

• Backlog
• Slack
• Google Meet / Zoom

Development Team

Data Scientist Team

• Hacarus's Kyoto CDO (Chief Data Officer) spearheads company members that include a previous Kyoto University researcher and part-time university employees
• The data scientist team is in charge of client hearing to machine learning-utilized model construction
• Kyoto University's masters and undergraduate students (in data systems-related majors), and Tohoku University's masters and undergraduate students (in data systems-related majors) who joined Hacarus as interns are currently working at Hacarus as in-office or remote members

Application Development Team

• Kyoto-based VPoP (Vice President of Product) leads Hacarus's Philippine-based members. Philippine-based members are all working fully remote.
• The application development team is responsible for developing SaaS-type web and mobile applications and operating server infrastructure
• An undergraduate student at Kyoto Sango University's Information Systems Department joined as a smartphone developer intern

Advisory

• Acting as advisors at Hacarus, we have Postgraduate Professor Ohzeki at the Graduate School of Informatics at Kyoto University and Professor Kawamoto at the Data Scientist Department at Shiga Prefecture providing us advice on-call.

Points of Focus in Technology

1) We will push forward with applying machine learning using sparse modeling in the medical and medical systems related imagery and time series data.

2) In the industrial field, we will promote automation of failure prediction, preventive maintenance, appearance inspection for optimization of factory production lines.

Most recently, in image analysis related to both medical and industrial fields, we are focusing on using OpenCV, expanding the in-house developed OSS spm-image and developing the video analysis model of our own product described later on.

Points of Focus in Recruitment This Year

The two points below includes what we'd like to achieve this year in hiring:

• Although we are currently receiving consultations from a large number of clients, there are still a number of clients that we cannot respond quickly enough due to resource issues. Despite these issues, many are looking to be prospect clients. We intend to accelerate our response to these issues and build on our track record in the fields of medicine and drug discovery.
• We will continue to develop the base of our services using the technologies we have cultivated through our experiences in consultation.

With regard to the latter company's own services, in particular, based on pilot analysis with various customers and on projects in the medical and industrial fields that will be carried out in the future, we will create products to determine how to continue our business. Along with writing code, we are in a phase where you can think about actual user needs and experience- all the elements in product development.

We're Hiring: Open Positions at Hacarus

Currently, we are recruiting positions in Kyoto.

In particular, if you are looking to advance your career as a data scientist or FPGA engineer, Hacarus Kyoto is the place you'd want to be! Let's grow together as a data scientists through continuous practice!

In addition to in-company OJT (on-the-job training), there is also a position with a training period in which you can perform online learning using Coursera etc. during business hours.

Kyoto

If you have any interest us and what we do, contact us and let's talk!

Japanese version below （日本語版）