About Yodo Labs

Yodo Labs is an applied AI research and engineering company based in Tokyo and Osaka. We help enterprises take their most difficult AI projects from prototype to production. Our team includes PhDs and industry researchers working across the full AI stack.

About the Role

Japan's AI community is growing fast, but it's fragmented — researchers, engineers, and business leaders working on similar problems often don't know each other. We want to change that, and we want you to lead the effort.

As Community & Events Manager, you won't just organize events — you'll build the connective tissue for applied AI practitioners in Japan and across APAC. You'll design programs that bring researchers, engineers, and industry practitioners together around real problems. You'll turn our technical work into stories that reach beyond our walls. And you'll create a community flywheel: events that attract talent, content that builds reputation, and relationships that open doors.

This is a part-time role with significant autonomy. We'll give you the mandate, the budget, and the access to our technical team. What you build with it is largely up to you.

What You'll Do

• Design and run technically substantive community programs — monthly meetups with real research talks, hands-on workshops where attendees build with LLMs, and reading groups that dig into new papers
• Work closely with our research and engineering team to turn their latest findings into accessible content — you'll need to understand what they're building well enough to explain why it matters
• Identify, recruit, and support community ambassadors and speakers — build a pipeline of AI practitioners, researchers, and founders who want to share their work through our platform
• Stay current with the applied AI landscape — track what the community cares about (new models, evaluation methods, agent patterns, deployment challenges) so our programming stays relevant, not generic
• Build relationships with universities, research labs, and industry groups across Japan and APAC — you'll represent Yodo Labs in the community
• Track what works and what doesn't — we care about genuine technical engagement, not vanity metrics

Representative projects

• Launching a monthly applied AI meetup in Tokyo with a consistent format: one research talk, one engineering talk, followed by structured networking — growing it from 20 to 100+ regular attendees
• Building a speaker pipeline by identifying researchers and practitioners across APAC whose work aligns with our community's interests, and maintaining long-term relationships with them
• Creating a post-event content workflow: turning talks into blog posts, short video clips, and newsletter highlights that reach people who couldn't attend
• Organizing a half-day workshop where our engineers teach participants to build and evaluate RAG systems, generating both community goodwill and leads for our consulting work

You may be a good fit if you have

• Experience building community programs or running event series — not just one event, but a sustained effort that grew over time
• Strong communication skills in both English and Japanese — you'll write content and host events in both languages
• Genuine curiosity about AI and what practitioners care about — you don't need to code, but you should be able to hold a conversation about why RAG evaluation is hard or what makes agent architectures interesting
• The instinct to build systems, not just execute tasks — you'll create repeatable formats and playbooks, not just react to requests
• Enough comfort with ambiguity to define your own priorities in a role where the playbook doesn't exist yet
• Availability of approximately 15–20 hours per week (flexible, with occasional evening events)

Candidates need not have

• A technical background — strong community builders with genuine interest in AI learn the domain fast
• Experience specifically in AI or tech events — transferable skills from other communities count
• An existing network in the AI community — we'll help you build one; what matters is your ability to connect with people

How to Apply

Send an email to team@yodolabs.jp with the subject line "Community & Events Manager — [Your Name]". Please include:

• Your CV or resume
• A brief description of a community program or event series you've built — we're interested in what you created, not just what you organized
• Any relevant links (portfolio, social media, past event pages)

Logistics

Location: Tokyo / Osaka, Japan — remote-friendly Work style: Flexible hours; we value output over presence Visa sponsorship: We sponsor work visas for Japan where possible

We encourage you to apply even if you don't meet every qualification listed.