Curious how difficult or easy these positions are to obtain? Are they government jobs or private? Are openings seasonal?
I come from a desktop service and admin background. My last gig involved supporting various American schools. I’m in japan (Osaka area) now with a spousal visa and aiming for N3 this December.
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99% of Boards of Education have private contracts with large IT firms to do the work for them.
Uchida Yoko and Uchida Esco are probably the best known service providers for schools specifically but you won’t stand a chance getting hired by them with not quite N3.
Fujitsu and their sub-divisions also do a lot of work in schools. However, Fujitsu’s work environment is awful so wouldn’t recommend.
In your position, I wouldn’t limit yourself to school IT and just grab whatever you can get to be quite honest.
Why would they hire a foreigner for IT who has almost N3 when they could hire a native who speaks native Japanese?
As a non native speaker basically impossible.
Why schools specifically? There are better IT positions out there.I imagine the contractors the schools hire for their help desk is bottom level it support with lousy pay and hours.
It’s quite strange but a lot of private schools don’t have a full-time or even a part-time tech person. The standard thing is to give teachers more duties, somehow, and hope that that works. Then various upgrades are contracted out.
I think even if you could find a job working for a school, the salary would most likely be much lower than you could earn elsewhere. But then again the workload might be more relaxed too, so who can say, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
Certainly you would want N2 proficiency.
IT jobs in general almost always state N2 as a requirement if they require Japanese.
If it’s not N2 then Japanese is probably not an essential requirement.
The only school IT positions likely to be without a Japanese requirement would be either direct hire by an international school or a firm that is supporting an international school. They are somewhat rare, but they do come up from time to time.
University of Maryland is hiring Yokota AB
Is it because Japanese school IT is equivalent to assisting your grandma how to use the computer? Just wondering why the preference?