Sakana AI Holds Open House for Five Job Roles

Sakana AI held an Open House for engineers on October 5, 2026. The second such event targeted five roles: Applied Research Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Software Engineer, Solution Engineer, and Cybersecurity Engineer. Employees in each role described their work and answered participants' questions.

Co-founder and CEO David Ha laid out a plan to build an AI company from Japan that can compete globally. The company is pursuing AI sovereignty across three layers: pretraining, post-training, and orchestration. In pretraining, it is developing a Japan-original agent-native LLM from scratch. In post-training, it uses Namazu to adapt overseas models to Japanese culture and customs. For orchestration, it offers Fugu, which switches among multiple models in case overseas models become unavailable due to geopolitical risks. Over the past six months it added Sakana Chat, Sakana Marlin, Sakana Fugu, and Sakana Translate, and it says future pillars will be enterprise, government and defense, and product businesses.

The Applied Team's finance work partners with MUFG, the Daiwa Securities Group, and the SMBC Group to support decisions such as medium-term business planning, macro environment analysis, M&A proposals, and advanced credit assessment. It integrates hundreds to thousands of data sources and supports decisions carrying impacts or risks of hundreds of millions of yen or more. Specialists such as former investment bankers and strategy consultants develop the tools alongside engineers, and challenges and assets from client projects are fed back into the platform. The work has expanded beyond finance into cybersecurity and manufacturing.

The Product Team developed Sakana Chat, Sakana Marlin, Sakana Fugu, Sakana Translate, and Sakana Namazu over six months, productizing ideas from Applied Team client projects and Research. The team has just over 20 members from Japan, India, China, and other countries, with separate business and technical leads for consumer and enterprise products. The GTM Team was formed in September 2026 and consists of three Account Executives and several Forward Deployed Engineers. It explores customer challenges, supports everything from prototype presentations to integration with existing systems, and returns customer feedback to Product and Research.

In defense, the company introduced research with the Defense Intelligence Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense on AI capabilities and demonstrations, and commissioned research with the Defense Innovation Science and Technology Research Institute of the Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency. A representative said that beyond holding its own models, the ability to evaluate, select, and integrate multiple models and switch from models that become unusable is important for security.

Across the five roles, Applied Research Engineers take technical leadership of solutions, and Forward Deployed Engineers understand customer operations and advance design and accuracy improvements. Software Engineers build AI products and infrastructure, and Solution Engineers handle deployment and operations in customer environments. Cybersecurity Engineers advance countermeasures early in development, data protection, and vulnerability assessment and management. Applied Research Engineer Naoki Murakami, on finance projects, works with real data at client offices two to three days a week, and Masato Ota described a finance team structure that assigns about 10 people per project. Kriti Agarwal develops agent harnesses and memory, and Ryunosuke Iwai cited the search infrastructure, an execution environment supporting processes that run for hours, and a knowledge base for long-term memory.

Defense Software Engineers also visit customers and interview staff about operations, and design systems including networks, drones, and data integration. Solution Engineers handle requirements definition and infrastructure such as Kubernetes and CI/CD, aiming for systems that keep running in customer operations rather than ending at trial deployment. Cybersecurity Engineers address security requirements for finance, defense, and products, and work on cloud environment and internal IT countermeasures as well as customer-facing security projects.

In the Q&A, the company answered that generally one engineer handles one project, with involvement in multiple projects possible depending on preference and ability. English is not required, though it is the common language of the Research team and useful for overseas projects. People without AI development experience can apply, but selection checks whether the gap in experience can be bridged. For defense and finance projects the company handles checklists of 500 to 600 items, and it sets a policy of building systems at high classification levels. Examples of Research technologies such as Fugu, Namazu, and AB-MCTS being deployed by Product and used by Applied were also explained.

The company did not specify a hiring number

Sakana AI held an Open House for engineers on October 5, 2026. The second such event targeted five roles: Applied Research Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Software Engineer, Solution Engineer, and Cybersecurity Engineer. Employees in each role described their work and answered participants' questions.

Co-founder and CEO David Ha laid out a plan to build an AI company from Japan that can compete globally. The company is pursuing AI sovereignty across three layers: pretraining, post-training, and orchestration. In pretraining, it is developing a Japan-original agent-native LLM from scratch. In post-training, it uses Namazu to adapt overseas models to Japanese culture and customs. For orchestration, it offers Fugu, which switches among multiple models in case overseas models become unavailable due to geopolitical risks. Over the past six months it added Sakana Chat, Sakana Marlin, Sakana Fugu, and Sakana Translate, and it says future pillars will be enterprise, government and defense, and product businesses.

The Applied Team's finance work partners with MUFG, the Daiwa Securities Group, and the SMBC Group to support decisions such as medium-term business planning, macro environment analysis, M&A proposals, and advanced credit assessment. It integrates hundreds to thousands of data sources and supports decisions carrying impacts or risks of hundreds of millions of yen or more. Specialists such as former investment bankers and strategy consultants develop the tools alongside engineers, and challenges and assets from client projects are fed back into the platform. The work has expanded beyond finance into cybersecurity and manufacturing.

The Product Team developed Sakana Chat, Sakana Marlin, Sakana Fugu, Sakana Translate, and Sakana Namazu over six months, productizing ideas from Applied Team client projects and Research. The team has just over 20 members from Japan, India, China, and other countries, with separate business and technical leads for consumer and enterprise products. The GTM Team was formed in September 2026 and consists of three Account Executives and several Forward Deployed Engineers. It explores customer challenges, supports everything from prototype presentations to integration with existing systems, and returns customer feedback to Product and Research.

In defense, the company introduced research with the Defense Intelligence Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense on AI capabilities and demonstrations, and commissioned research with the Defense Innovation Science and Technology Research Institute of the Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency. A representative said that beyond holding its own models, the ability to evaluate, select, and integrate multiple models and switch from models that become unusable is important for security.

Across the five roles, Applied Research Engineers take technical leadership of solutions, and Forward Deployed Engineers understand customer operations and advance design and accuracy improvements. Software Engineers build AI products and infrastructure, and Solution Engineers handle deployment and operations in customer environments. Cybersecurity Engineers advance countermeasures early in development, data protection, and vulnerability assessment and management. Applied Research Engineer Naoki Murakami, on finance projects, works with real data at client offices two to three days a week, and Masato Ota described a finance team structure that assigns about 10 people per project. Kriti Agarwal develops agent harnesses and memory, and Ryunosuke Iwai cited the search infrastructure, an execution environment supporting processes that run for hours, and a knowledge base for long-term memory.

Defense Software Engineers also visit customers and interview staff about operations, and design systems including networks, drones, and data integration. Solution Engineers handle requirements definition and infrastructure such as Kubernetes and CI/CD, aiming for systems that keep running in customer operations rather than ending at trial deployment. Cybersecurity Engineers address security requirements for finance, defense, and products, and work on cloud environment and internal IT countermeasures as well as customer-facing security projects.

In the Q&A, the company answered that generally one engineer handles one project, with involvement in multiple projects possible depending on preference and ability. English is not required, though it is the common language of the Research team and useful for overseas projects. People without AI development experience can apply, but selection checks whether the gap in experience can be bridged. For defense and finance projects the company handles checklists of 500 to 600 items, and it sets a policy of building systems at high classification levels. Examples of Research technologies such as Fugu, Namazu, and AB-MCTS being deployed by Product and used by Applied were also explained.

The company did not specify a hiring number