If we are talking total comp, this is somewhat the range I have observed as well. There are Japanese companies where you can expect 80k+ with only a few years o

If we are talking total comp, this is somewhat the range I have observed as well. There are Japanese companies where you can expect 80k+ with only a few years of relevant experience. If you have some specialties in demand and are good at it (e.g. Machine Learning/Deep Learning), you can get more. In international companies, as purely a software engineer, you can go above 150k total comp. If you want to make more, you want to go toward sales/marketing/etc. In that aspect, it is a bit like Europe where staying technical locks you very quickly. A good sales/marketing person can make 200k+, but that would of course require excellent Japanese skills. [edit] Source: I am managing a machine learning group in a startup in Tokyo and manage the hiring of my team.