This survey has become a yearly thing. Browse all our survey results.
If you’re an international software developer looking for a job in Japan, it can be hard to tell what your market rate is. Sure, there’s data (in Japanese) for the market as a whole, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the kind of positions that international software developers hold here. So to better shed a light on software developer salaries in Japan, I conducted a survey of international developers working in Japan. The following results are based on the average total yearly salary (including bonuses) reported by respondents.
Salary by years of experience in software development
| Years of experience | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|
| Under 2 years | ¥4 million | 19 people |
| 2 to 3 years | ¥6 million | 32 people |
| 4 to 7 years | ¥8 million | 62 people |
| 8 to 15 years | ¥9 million | 57 people |
| Over 16 years | ¥11 million | 19 people |
The compensation for developers participating in my survey is significantly better than that of a typical Japanese one.
For instance, this 2018 survey conducted by the Japanese government found that the average “System Engineer” (a roughly analogous position to a software developer) in Japan had 12 years of experience and an annual compensation of ¥5.5 million.
Salary by English / Japanese usage
| English usage | Japanese usage | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Never | Frequently | ¥6 million | 17 people |
| Sometimes | Frequently | ¥7 million | 22 people |
| Frequently | Never | ¥8 million | 37 people |
| Frequently | Sometimes | ¥8 million | 83 people |
| Frequently | Frequently | ¥9 million | 28 people |
I think there’s two factors at play that explain why people who use primarily Japanese at their job tend to get paid worse than those using English.
First, English ability is something that is exceptional in Japan, and so if a company wants to hire an English speaking developer, they need to pay a premium for it.
Secondly, companies that recruit English speaking developers with little to no Japanese skill also tend to be looking for technical excellence, and thus are willing to pay higher salaries.
Salary by Industry
| Industry | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | ¥8 million | 17 people |
| Finance | ¥11 million | 28 people |
| Games | ¥5 million | 11 people |
| SaaS | ¥7 million | 23 people |
| Other | ¥8 million | 103 people |
Respondents were spread across a wide range of industries, and in these results I’m only including the industries with at least ten respondents, so most of them fell into the “Other” bucket.
Salary by company size
| Employee count | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|
| Under 30 | ¥7 million | 42 people |
| 30 to 99 | ¥6 million | 40 people |
| 100 to 300 | ¥7 million | 33 people |
| 300 to 1999 | ¥9 million | 23 people |
| 2000 and over | ¥11 million | 48 people |
As a general trend, the larger the company, the better the pay. Curiously, there’s a small dip in pay going from a very small company of under thirty people, to a slightly larger one.
Salary by Programming Language
| Rank | Language | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Go | ¥10 million | 20 people |
| 2 | Java | ¥10 million | 34 people |
| 3 | Kotlin | ¥9 million | 12 people |
| 4 | Python | ¥9 million | 41 people |
| 5 | TypeScript | ¥8 million | 18 people |
| 6 | Ruby | ¥8 million | 53 people |
| 7 | C++ | ¥8 million | 16 people |
| 8 | Swift | ¥8 million | 15 people |
| 9 | JavaScript | ¥7 million | 84 people |
| 10 | PHP | ¥6 million | 11 people |
| 11 | C# | ¥6 million | 17 people |
People could include multiple programming languages in their response, hence JavaScript being the most popular programming language.
The relative ranking of compensation by programming language is roughly similar to this Japanese ranking, though compensation in that ranking is much lower across the board. Java seems to be the main outlier in my results, falling in second place in my survey, but not making the top ten in that ranking.
Salary by location
| Prefecture | Salary | Respondents |
|---|---|---|
| Greater Tokyo | ¥8 million | 168 people |
| Elsewhere | ¥5 million | 23 people |
Most opportunities for software developers in Japan are in Tokyo. 88% of respondents were working for a company with offices in the greater Tokyo area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama).
Survey Methodology
I announced the survey through the TokyoDev mailing list, and through my personal social media channels such as Twitter. As such, the results are biased towards that of fluent English speakers (though often non-native speakers).
219 people in total responded to the survey. However, after restricting responses to those who said they were living in Japan, working for a company with offices in Japan, and were not Japanese citizens, and included a salary that was not so high or low to be an obvious typo, I whittled that down to 191 results.
When breaking down the results, I rounded to the nearest million yen, as I thought any more precise numbers would imply a significance that isn’t there.
