When interviewing for larger companies, a programming language is not the most important factor for a Software Engineer position in Japan. Instead, your computer science fundamentals, such as your understanding of algorithms & data structures like stacks, binary trees, and arrays, are more important.
For smaller companies, programming languages may be more important as they may lack the necessary training to educate new joiners or may want to hire someone who can quickly ramp up. Even for larger companies, it can help your profile if you understand to know the language the company uses. As such, it can be helpful to understand which languages are in demand.
A survey by Nikkei-xTech on popular languages
A survey by Nikkei shows that the most popular languages are as follows:
From our experience as technical recruiters, we agree largely with the survey results done by Nikkei, but Nikkei focuses mainly on Japanese companies. As technical recruiters that specialize in Gaishikei companies, below are our ranking of popular programming languages in Japan for foreign internet/SaaS companies:
- Java
- Python
- Javascript
- Ruby
- Golang
- PHP
- Swift
- Kotlin
- Scala
- Perl
Languages that pay well from BizReach:
BizReach is one of the most popular mid-career job board in Japan, with the majority of both Gaishikei and Nikkei internet/SaaS companies using the service. The below shows which average salaries and the # of jobs for different programming languages.
| Language | Average Salary | Maximum Salary | # of jobs on BizReach |
| Go | 6M | 16M | 2,202 |
| Scala | 6M | 13M | 1,489 |
| Python | 5.8M | 15M | 9,344 |
| Kotlin | 5.8M | 12M | 961 |
| TypeScript | 5.8M | 12M | 667 |
| R | 5.8M | 10M | 220 |
| Ruby | 5.5M | 12M | 11,676 |
| Swift | 5.5M | 12M | 3,353 |
| Perl | 5.3M | 12M | 4,509 |
| C | 5.3M | 10M | 9,347 |