I'm trying to prepare for a possible future move to Japan with my japanese spouse, and I'm struggling a bit right now because I feel like I have to make some choices regarding my career.
I have a degree in software engineering and I've been working at a big international consultant firm the last 2 years as a Salesforce developer. Salesforce wasn't my choice, but there were no available other projects at the time unfortunately.
So my question is if there is any market for Salesforce developers in Japan, or should I try to pivot to something else? I feel like it's difficult to know what I want to work with because I just don't have any other experience. My worry is that Salesforce is a rather siloed stack that doesn't translate all that well to other technologies, and considering the way I work as a consultant now it would require a much higher level of japanese than I have.
I don't know exactly when the move might be, anything from 2-5 years, so of course a lot could change in tech in that time..
by Odd_Run_2817
6 comments
If you want to increase your probability of moving to Japan, you need to learn something that is more in demand. If you’re playing the long game (which I recommend), find a job in your home country that lets you build your programming skills in a more desirable and general-purpose language (e.g. Java, C++, C#). Better if you can find a job in an international company who has a history of transferring people to other branches.
Had a friend looking for Salesforce and ServiceNow work 3 years ago and didn’t find anything related to development
As you mentioned, Salesforce is a niche skill. All depends how popular it will be in the future, pretty much similar to SAP and the likes. You should be able to quickly browse the available positions in the market to check if it’s relevant today in Tokyo.
In the topic of whether you should pivot to be a more generalist, there isn’t a binary answer to it. Will you have better chances of securing? Yes, probably, but you’d still need to fit their skill criteria related to specific tech stack majority of times, don’t ask me how I know.
You’re on the right track if you’re planning this early ahead though. In fact, another advice I’d give is to start learning Japanese as prep. That’s gonna boost your chances considerably more in the pool.
Beware of black companies though, search for ones that’s international, or going there. There isn’t many if I’m honest, startups are the easier barrier entry as fallback, pays lesser as well, of course.
Look at Japan job boards and see what’s in demand and use that as a guide for what to work on
Try checking Salesforce Japan to see if they have any suitable roles you could apply to?
Can I ask how old you are now? Might give a good idea of how much experience you’ll need