Currently I am living in Japan. This question is actually for my husband . Currently he is working in a Japanese company. Due to some reasons he wants to change his job and join in a foreign company in Japan as an Engineer.
How much salary should he expect at starting. And as for the bonus, can he expect it from the first year of his working period. It will be really helpful if we get to know the answers mentioned above. Thank you
Edit: He is in mechanical engineering. Has 5 years of job experience and current annual salary is 6 millions. He can speak both Japanese and English fluently. Has JLPT N2 level certificate and TOEIC also.
19 comments
Is that as an IT engineer or do you mean a mechanical engineer? I have a good friend who is a recruiter for Japanese speaking engineers and could give salary advice but only for the IT field.
Yeah, there’s not nearly enough info for you to get a clear answer I think. What kind of engineer? How much experience does he have? What’s his current salary? Etc… Bonus systems tend to differ greatly depending on the company.
Both Japanese and foreigner companies usually pay them from the first year (or at least the non-black ones usually do). But it is pro-rated based on the join-date.
Based on the information you provided, he can expect to earn somewhere between 3 and 40 million yen per year.
Check vorkers.com
Edit: gaishikeis seem to be pretty much all over the place with the salary, but trending at least slightly above domestic companies regarding baseline salary.
Need more information. What kind of engineer, how much experience, qualifications, etc.
Migrate out of Japan.
No company will pay higher than that except he gets promotion to managerial position.
The job market can fluctuate, and salary offerings can change all the time. I would suggest that he contacts some top-notch recruiters in his field and leverages his own network within the industry to get an idea of the current situation. If foreign-based companies have active recruiting systems, he can explore positions that match his qualifications.
That said, I’d like to make a few remarks here. I have prior experience working for foreign-based companies, and it’s worth noting that 5 years of experience is typically considered mid-career at a junior level, if that makes sense to you.
Regarding the JLPT, while he may be fluent, understand that the JLPT does not assess active skills such as speaking and writing. It mainly tests reading and listening abilities. In the foreign-based companies I worked for, we considered N2 as an intermediate level for reading.
As for the TOEIC, if he is applying for a foreign-based company, it might not carry much relevance. Like the JLPT, the TOEIC predominantly tests listening and reading skills. While having a TOEIC score is better than nothing, some companies may consider scores below 900 as irrelevant.
Lastly, the current market situation is not so positive, with many companies slowing down their recruiting activities, and that may have reflected in the salary range for some of them. It did indeed, particularly in my field, with the salary range not being so attractive.
https://opensalary.jp/roles/software-engineer
I would say minimum double the salary he is making in Japanese company and if he did good research about the company maybe can triple it
Depending on your husband specialty (Mech engineer yes but what field, Bachelor or Masters) and actual experience, 6M JPY is either on target or little low. Also depends on his seniority/responsibilities in previous position(s).
Several things to consider but it will depend on where you live/work, his actual level of Japanese in work environment ( I have given interviews to people with N1/N2 in JP companies and their japanese was quite limited to be honest).
When I was looking at profiles of Engineers vs their requested salary, it all comes down to how qualified they are and how they can present these skills during the discussions.
Working in foreign/gaishikei will definitely help in getting higher salary but you should consider other elements such as WFH.
If he has no idea what to look for, I would recommend to look into renewable sector, especially wind energy as it tends to be paying more. Small warning though is that there have been several foreign wind companies recruiting a lot then having to close shop due to them not being able to secure projects.
Should aim for 10 million
So first thing 6M Is definitely not bad for 20s in ME, so need to understand that you most likely won’t be able to make any crazy jumps right now. Maybe 7m range at best.
This also depends on what industry you are in, as you need to identify the big players and gaishikei (if any). Also bear in mind many many gaishikei operate the same way, if not worse than traditional japanese companies so you need to do you research properly. (Vorkers, linkedin etc).
It’s hard to say.
Even foreign gaishikeis, higher salaries could potentially only come under certain conditions. For the company I work at, only the workers who are hired at the US headquarters and transfer over on assignment have the silicon valley tier salaries. If you were hired locally as an engineer and part of the local Japan operations, you’d just get better than average Japanese salaries like 30-40 is 6M, 40 to 50 maybe 7M and 50 to 60 is 8M with forced retirement after.
more like what exactly does he do, what industry, what skills does he have.
Foreign companies who recruit mechanical engineers in Japan probably will have him do the selling jobs for car parts if he is fine with that. The reason of higher payment in foreign companies in Japan cuz they only do sale to Japanese companies and don’t do R&D and manufacturing stuffs but rather delegating manufacturing to somewhere else for cheaper costs. Your husband new job will likely be to assure that process or to sale the products to another Japanese customers
It can vary massively just on the company alone even in the same industry.
I knew someone who did a inter-company transfer to a Japanese division, pretty much “hired” by them, in the countryside and made 8mil and got his housing paid on top of that. He was also 6 months out of college in this company as well.
Honest answer, depends on his connection. – No connections? – Depends on his competency. Not competent and just average? – maybe just 5M-12M.
Competence (very smart and hard working): 8M-40M. – I’m here
Good connections/highly skilled competent: 15M-100M
There’s so many different types of engineering , my father was an instrumental engineer earning around 15m per year while my brother-in-law is a mechanical engineer for yanmar earning around 5m per year. Need to be more specific.
Your post history mentions Nagoya.
I think that 6M is quite fair for Nagoya.