Software Developer Salaries in Japan

Understanding software developer salaries in Japan can be tricky. On the whole, software development doesn’t pay exceptionally well: according to a 2024 survey conducted by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan, the average annual salary of software engineers in Japan was 5.69 million yen. This puts it a bit above the overall average salary of full-time employees of 4.9 million yen.

At the same time, though, TokyoDev’s own survey of English-speaking international software developers in Japan found that the median salary of respondents was 8.5 million yen. This is likely because our respondents were far from typical. For instance, only 71% of them worked at a company headquartered in Japan. Almost 80% of them used English always or frequently, and 79% of them worked on an engineering team where many of the members were non-Japanese.

This makes the question, “What is a reasonable developer salary in Japan?” a difficult one to answer. If you are a “typical” Japanese software developer with three years of experience, a salary of 4 million yen may sound reasonable. Yet if you ask the international developers on TokyoDev’s Discord if 4 million is enough, you’re likely to be told it is on the low side and you can probably do better.

So with that in mind, I think it’s important to get an overview of the market both for exceptional English-speaking international software developers, and typical Japanese ones. This article will compare TokyoDev’s own findings on software engineer salaries with other Japanese sources.

Trends in compensation for software developers in Japan

Since the first comprehensive survey TokyoDev conducted in 2019, salaries trended significantly upward until 2022, with the median increasing from 7.0 million yen to 9.5 million yen (a 36% increase). In our 2023 results, the median compensation decreased for the first time, to 8.5 million yen, and remained steady there through 2024.

That downward trend may be due to an increase in the number of respondents working for Japanese-headquartered companies, up from 63% in 2022 to 71% in 2024. We found that respondents who worked at an international subsidiary had a median compensation of 12.5 million yen. By contrast, those who worked at a Japanese company had a median of 8.5 million yen, so a higher percentage of such respondents lowers the overall median compensation.

Comparison: the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare conducts the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey annually. While this survey is not without flaws, it does collect data on a massive scale, having most recently documented approximately six hundred thousand respondents classified as “software creators” (defined as those engaged in specification determination, design, and programming work for software creation).

The survey found that the average compensation of software creators increased from 4.8 million yen to 5.4 million yen (a 12.5% increase) between 2020 and 2024. While this is not as striking as our findings, it suggests that the market overall has been moving to raise the pay of software developers.

Unfortunately the survey’s data from 2019 and before isn’t directly comparable, as there was no “software creator” classification then, only a “programmer” one. Since the mean compensation for programmers in 2019 was only 3.9 million yen, it seems likely that the respondents themselves were quite different. Traditionally in Japan, the word “programmer” has referred to someone whose job is to take a specification and turn it into code, without doing anything else (think the way software was written in the punch card days). By that definition it is no wonder they were paid less.

Salary by experience

Experience is one of the most important factors in determining your salary as a developer, and can be a good place to start when you’re trying to judge your value in the market.

In our 2024 data, we saw the gap between junior and mid-career developers widen. While those with 1–3 years of experience in our 2024 survey made a median of 3.5 million yen, those with similar experience in the 2023 survey made a median of 5.7 million yen. Compensation for more senior developers remained the same.

Comparison: the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey

The 2024 Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey found that the mean compensation of software creators with no experience was 3.6 million yen. This is quite a large jump from 2022, when it was 3.0 million yen. As the numbers for other levels of experience were similar, I’m not sure if this change reflects an actual shift in the market, or represents a difference in who answered the survey.

While there isn’t much gap between their data and ours for starting positions, the difference increases dramatically with experience. Their respondents with 15+ years of experience earned a mean of 6.5 million yen; our respondents with only 4–6 years of experience earned a median of 8.1 million yen. These figures highlight just how different the “typical” compensation for software developers in Japan is compared to that for international developers.

Comparison: Qiita’s Engineer White Paper 2024

Qiita is a service for recording and sharing knowledge that is popular among Japanese developers. Their Engineer White Paper 2024 is based on a survey they conducted of their own users, which got over 2,000 responses.

The data is interesting as their audience is fairly analogous to TokyoDev’s, with the exception of being Japanese rather than international developers. The people who use their site are likely motivated engineers who care about their craft, and not just people who are doing it because their company decided they should do software development. (Japanese companies have a history of assigning employees to be software developers regardless of interest or aptitude.)

As their report shows what percentage of respondents fit into a given salary range, it is a bit difficult to directly compare it with our data. However, it is apparent that their respondents made less than ours. For instance, while 50% of our respondents with 10–12 years of experience made 11.2 million yen or more, only 15% of their respondents with 10+ years of experience made 10 million yen or more.

Salary by age

In Japan, lifetime employment has traditionally been the norm. As employees could expect their compensation to increase with seniority, it was also essentially tied to their age. When I first came to Japan, I heard the typical formula was age x 10,000 yen per month, so for a 23-year-old a salary of 230,000 yen per month would be considered normal.

At least among the kind of companies employing TokyoDev respondents, though, I’ve gotten the impression that age has less bearing than work experience. I’m including our data for salary by age primarily as a way to compare it with other Japanese sources.

Comparison: Forkwell

Forkwell offers a platform for Japanese software engineers looking to change jobs. They’ve released a report that analyzes the data of 10,000 registered users, including a salary breakdown based on age.

Again, our respondents consistently made more than theirs. The gap was least pronounced among the youngest respondents, with ours earning a median 36% more than theirs, but for 35–39 year olds, the median salary of our respondents was 65% more than theirs.

Salary by gender

Only 10% of our respondents were women (79 respondents in total). We found that women had a lower median compensation than men. While our female respondents had slightly less experience than male ones, even when accounting for this difference, male respondents continued to make more.

The reasons behind this disparity are complex, but it’s clear that women face challenges in the Japanese tech industry. Despite this, the subjective experiences of women working as software engineers in Japan are generally positive.

Comparison: the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey

The Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey provides a breakdown of compensation by experience and gender. We used this to calculate the wage gap, and saw that women software creators earned less than men across all levels of experience.

Comparison: Forkwell

In 2023, Forkwell collaborated with bgrass, an organization working to close the gender gap in tech, to conduct a survey of 311 male and 126 female engineers. The survey measured “theoretical annual income,” calculated by deriving the hourly wage of an engineer from their average annual income, the number of working days per week, and the working hours per day, and then converting these numbers into an annual income figure assuming full-time work.

Their data paints a similar picture to the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey: women in the middle of their career endure the biggest wage gap. Only 27% of women with 5–9 years of experience made more than 5 million yen, while 47% of men did.

The survey also explored how the kind of company a woman works at affects the wage gap, and found that outsourcing companies had a particularly large gender pay gap compared to those that made their own IT/Web service. In these outsourcing companies, only 11% of women made more than 5 million yen, while 39% of men did.

Salary by type of company

One reason our respondents enjoy higher pay is the type of companies they work for. Notably, 19% worked for a subsidiary of an international company, and 6% for a company without any legal entity in Japan. It seems obvious to me that those numbers are much higher for the TokyoDev audience than for the overall population of software engineers (though I didn’t find any data to back this).

This is significant as we found that the median compensation of respondents at internationally-headquartered companies was almost 50% more than those at domestically-headquartered ones!

While the compensation of Japanese companies seems slowly trending upward, that of international subsidiaries appeared to peak in 2022 and has been declining since.

Salary by employer size

We found that salaries increased with the number of employees. Respondents at companies with 10–19 employees had a median compensation of 8.5 million yen, while those at companies with 10,000 or more had a median salary of 10.5 million yen.

Comparison: the Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey

The Wage Structure Basic Statistical Survey also found that compensation increased with employee count. Respondents at companies with 1000 employees or more made on average 22% more than those at companies with 10–99 employees. In 2022, the difference on average was 47% more for big companies—but again it is hard to tell if this reflects a change in which companies were sampled, or is indicative of a shift in the market.

Salary by role

We found that respondents who worked as engineering managers had the highest compensation. This can be explained in part by them having the most experience. Data scientists stood out as enjoying high median compensation even with low median experience.

Comparison: Robert Half

The recruiting company Robert Half publishes a salary guide for software engineering positions in Japan, and their recommendations aren’t significantly different from our findings. As they target bilingual people for higher-paying roles, this isn’t surprising.

Salary by educational background

While having a computer science or related degree is helpful for getting a visa in Japan, it doesn’t seem to be so relevant in terms of compensation.

A master’s or doctorate may lead to a bump in salary over having just a bachelor’s degree, but when considering the opportunity cost of picking up a couple more years of experience, it probably isn’t a worthwhile investment from the compensation perspective.

Salary by Japanese ability

We found that Japanese ability wasn’t strongly correlated with salary.

Salary by Japanese usage

On the other hand, we did see that those who exclusively used Japanese were compensated much worse.

Salary by programming language

We found that respondents who used Kotlin had the highest compensation, while those using PHP were paid the least.

Comparison: Forkwell

In Forkwell’s report, they broke down salary by programming language and age. They found that Go developers consistently made the most, and PHP developers made the least.

Comparison: Qiita’s Engineer White Paper 2024

In Qiita’s Engineer White Paper 2024, they found that more than 30% of Go and Python developers make 8 million yen or more per year.

Further insights

This article has only covered a fraction of the discoveries we’ve made in our annual survey. Check out the full results to drill deeper into the compensation, work experience, and lifestyle of international software engineers in Japan.