What's a good salary for a senior frontend developer?

Hi,
I’m planning to move to Tokyo and looking for info on developer related jobs in Japan I’ve found this forum.

I’m a JavaScript/Frontend developer working in the field since 11 years now. I don’t have a related University degree (I have an Italian Communication Sciences 3 years degree), but from what I understand I have the required minimum working seniority to be eligible for an Engineering Visa.

As for Japanese language skills I have basic conversational skills, but no language certifications ATM.

I surfed the forum and read this article (http://www.tokyodev.com/2014/02/13/japanese-developer-salary/) but I can’t get an idea of what could be an average monthly salary for a senior developer. Also in the article is unclear whether the yearly salary is gros or net (in Italy employee job offers are often net).

Thanks in advance!

I’m also a front end dev and interested in this answer, although I have 5 years exp. OP, have you found some jobs/interviews or good resources for finding them?

From what I understood from my contacts, most of the opportunities are in Tokyo, especially fornon-native devs. Right now it’s the “golden age” of frontend, so having experience in the field should help a bit.
I didn’t yet look in depth, but searching on gaijinpot and other resources listed in tokyodev articles is a good option. Lately many web agencies seems to like posting on wantedly (https://www.wantedly.com/) but since it’s just in Japanese it’s a bit difficult to use if you’re not so fluent.

Salaries for developers typically are between 4 and 10 million JPY. It depends on your skill set, but in your situation probably best case is around 7 million JPY. This is exclusive of all taxes and deductions.

Thanks for the info!

Living abroad I guess I could setup remote interviews. My next trip to Japan will be 2 weeks in mid August (Italian company are pretty strict about whrn you can get long time vacations). Since it’s Obon time do you think it’d be hard to schedule interviews during that period?

Obon isn’t an official holiday in Japan, though many take time off around then. Most tech companies don’t seem to explicitly shut down then, but rather offer employees three days of “summer holidays” which they can take at a time of their choosing instead,

If you have companies who are interested in interviewing you, I think you can probably make something work. If you’re only going to be here for two weeks though, you’ll need to already have some interviews booked before you come here, as that isn’t so much time.

Sorry for the late reply.

Yes I was thinking of getting in touch with some companies from here, but I guess some will likely ask for a face to face interview which I could schedule during my vacation period.

Thank you very much for the very valuable infos!

Did you get any further with your search?

Hi, not really.

I had some delays due to heavy workload at my current company. Right know I received a couple of replies and had “first contact” with some agencies, but since they require me to have an interview in Tokyo I’ve planned a trip on mid March to have a round of interviews.
Anyway they didn’t seem too worried about visa, so I guess the main issue could be the salary agreement.

Hi,

Just to update the thread for future reference. I ended up finding a company which sponsored me and made the paper for an engineering visa COE.

As I wrote earlier I don’t hold a CS degree so I had to ask for work certificates from my previous employers and had them translated to Japanese.
Even if the Japanese immigration help service tells you that contracts are fine they aren’t, because they want a paper certifying for HOW LONG you worked for a company (full time long-term contracts report just your starting day… Stupid me not having thought it before).
Anyway all this paperwork and some inexperience on both sides (mine and the company’s) lead to a delay so that in the end I’m moving to Tokyo on Jan 2018.

Anyway: got the job even if I’m not fluent in Japanese (that limited my “market value”) and instead of the 1 year visa requested from the company I received a 3 years visa.

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Awesome to hear! Thanks so much for reporting back. Glad you could get those work certificates sorted out, and a 3 year visa to boot.

Thank you for the help!

Hey, just out of curiosity, what sort of experience did you have prior to accepting the position in Japan? Did you have a good online presence? How did you go about finding job postings and then requesting sponsorship?