Five publishers lead the Japan salary guide market: Michael Page, Robert Walters, Hays, Morgan McKinley, and Robert Half. The consensus index reconciles all five into one median per role, 181 roles across technology, finance, financial services, sales, life sciences, human resources, procurement and supply chain, marketing, and the smaller commercial functions, instead of five separate bands. Beside every salary sits the industry-typical agency fee, computed at 35% of theoretical annual salary, so the acquisition cost of the hire reads in the same row as the pay. The fee overlay is the index's one addition to the published data; everything else traces to the guides themselves.
How to Read These Numbers
A reconciled median is one figure per role, drawn from every guide that publishes the title and pooled only after a consistency check. Coverage counts the guides behind each figure: a five-guide median is a firmer anchor than a two-guide one, and the count is printed beside every role so the difference stays visible.
Disagreement between the guides widens with seniority. On a Cloud Engineer, all five land near ¥11,000,000. On a Chief Financial Officer, the two guides that cover the title span ¥15,000,000 to ¥70,000,000. Individual-contributor medians stay consistent across guides; executive medians are wide midpoints because the sources disagree.
Treat every figure as a starting anchor rather than a verdict. A specific hire moves it: company stage, scarcity, bilingual requirements, and how fast the seat has to close all pull the number, and the fee stacked on it moves in proportion.
Explore Salary and Fee by Function
To price a whole function at a glance, pick it in the explorer and set the engagement model. Every consensus role in the function renders with its median, the agency fee at the model's market-standard rate, and the total acquisition cost in the same row.
Switching the model from contingency at 35% to exclusive at 25% re-prices every row at once; on the ¥33,250,000 CFO median, those ten points are ¥3,325,000 on a single hire.
Technology
Technology is the deepest function in the index at 38 roles, and the best corroborated: Cloud Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and Data Analyst are each reported by all five guides. Those anchors sit at ¥11,000,000, ¥11,500,000, and ¥10,000,000. The full ladder runs from a Test Analyst at ¥8,250,000 to a Chief Information Officer at ¥33,000,000, and the CIO row carries the function's widest disagreement: the two guides that cover it span ¥20,000,000 to ¥50,000,000, a ¥30,000,000 spread. Coverage thins on the specialist architecture and leadership titles, where 23 of the 38 roles rest on two guides.
The fee column scales with the base the whole way up; on the CIO median it reaches ¥11,550,000, more than a Test Analyst's entire salary. The stack-by-stack breakdown, including why a Technical Architect out-earns the manager above them, lives in the dedicated guide to technology salaries in Japan.
Product, Delivery and Design
Six roles cover the product and delivery track. UX/UI Designer is the anchor, the only title here reported by all five guides, at ¥8,500,000; Product Manager follows on four guides at ¥12,125,000. Program Manager tops the ladder at ¥16,000,000 and Web Designer closes it at ¥7,000,000. Project Manager carries the loosest figure: the three guides that report it disagree by ¥13,000,000, from ¥7,000,000 to ¥20,000,000, a spread as large as the median itself.
Check the coverage column before anchoring here; the two five- and four-guide rows read very differently from the rest.
Accounting and Finance
Corporate finance runs 24 roles, the second-deepest function in the index, and shows the seniority pattern at its sharpest. The ladder starts at an Accountant on ¥6,500,000 and ends at a Chief Financial Officer on ¥33,250,000, where the two covering guides span ¥15,000,000 to ¥70,000,000: a ¥55,000,000 spread, the widest anywhere in the dataset. The best-corroborated rungs sit mid-ladder, with Financial Controller at ¥18,500,000, FP&A Manager at ¥12,625,000, Finance Manager at ¥12,250,000, and Financial Analyst at ¥8,000,000 each on four guides. Finance also splits into lanes that one table can't fully show: accounting, FP&A, tax, treasury, and audit each price their own track. The lane-by-lane breakdown, including why "Controller" alone covers several different jobs, lives in the dedicated guide to finance salaries in Japan.
Read the CFO row with its coverage count in view: two guides, and the widest disagreement in the index.
Financial Services Risk and Control
The risk and control function that banks and asset managers hire runs 19 roles, every one reported by exactly two guides. The structure is four parallel tracks, credit risk, market risk, operational risk, and financial control, each laddering from analyst to director or managing director. The band runs from an Operational Risk Analyst at ¥6,875,000 to a Credit Risk Managing Director at ¥31,750,000, whose covering guides span ¥25,000,000 to ¥45,000,000. One pattern holds at every rung: credit risk out-pays market risk, which out-pays operational risk, from analyst through managing director.
Uniform two-guide coverage means every row here is a reference band, useful for relative pricing between tracks more than absolute precision.
Sales
Twelve sales roles, and the function's defining finding: the same title reconciles to a different median depending on the industry the seat sits in. A Sales Manager benchmarks at ¥14,000,000 in Industrial & Manufacturing, ¥17,190,273 in Life Sciences, and ¥25,000,000 in Technology; a Sales Director shows the same slope, ¥21,250,000 in Industrial & Manufacturing against ¥33,750,000 in Technology. Three industries moving the same direction on one title rules out coincidence: industry, rather than the words on the org chart, sets the sales number. The ladder overall runs from a Key Account Manager at ¥10,250,000 to the Technology Sales Director at ¥33,750,000, where the two covering guides span ¥20,000,000 to ¥50,000,000. The same effect, scope hiding under an identical title, is a large part of why agencies quote different fees for roles that look interchangeable on paper. The industry-by-industry breakdown, including the fee on each scoped row, lives in the dedicated guide to sales salaries in Japan.
Price a sales seat from the industry-scoped row, never the bare title; the gap between them is measured in millions of yen.
Life Sciences
Life sciences runs 19 roles across clinical, regulatory, medical affairs, and quality. The best-corroborated rows are Regulatory Affairs Manager at ¥15,000,000 and Clinical Research Associate (CRA) at ¥7,100,256, each on four guides; most of the rest rest on two. The ladder tops out at a Medical Affairs Director on ¥23,704,513, where the covering guides span ¥15,000,000 to ¥35,000,000, and bottoms at the CRA. Several medians here land on unrounded yen figures: the pipeline reconciles the guides' published numbers as printed, without rounding them into tidier ones.
Director-level rows carry the widest bands, so the coverage column matters most at the top of this function. The lane-by-lane breakdown, including why the same "manager" title prices apart across regulated tracks, lives in the dedicated guide to life sciences salaries in Japan.
Human Resources
Seventeen HR roles, with one of the strongest single anchors in the index: Compensation & Benefits Specialist at ¥9,000,000 is reported by all five guides. Four more titles, including HR Director and HR Manager, rest on four guides each. The ladder runs from a Payroll Specialist at ¥7,000,000 to the HR Director at ¥22,875,000, and the director row is also the function's widest disagreement: four guides spanning ¥16,000,000 to ¥30,000,000. Specialist titles group tightly between ¥7,000,000 and ¥9,000,000 while every manager rung sits between ¥11,000,000 and ¥14,500,000.
The HR ladder is unusually legible: rung and prefix, specialist against manager against director, predict the band well. The lane-by-lane breakdown, including the seven lanes that never promote into each other, lives in the dedicated guide to HR salaries in Japan.
Supply Chain and Procurement
Supply chain covers 12 roles from a Buyer at ¥6,250,000 to a Supply Chain Director at ¥18,750,000, whose two covering guides span ¥12,000,000 to ¥25,000,000. The firmest anchors are Supply Chain Manager at ¥12,000,000 and Logistics Manager at ¥10,500,000, each on four guides. Direct and indirect procurement price identically at manager level, both at ¥11,000,000 on three guides. Planner and specialist roles fill the band between ¥6,500,000 and ¥8,250,000.
Manager-level rows here carry the coverage; director rows are two-guide reference bands. The role-by-role breakdown, including why the coverage ceiling stops at four and why proportional spread stays flat across the ladder here, lives in the dedicated guide to procurement and supply chain salaries in Japan.
Marketing
Eleven marketing roles, every one reported by exactly two guides, running from a Copywriter at ¥7,000,000 to a Marketing Director at ¥16,750,000 whose sources span ¥12,000,000 to ¥25,000,000. The communications group prices flat: Corporate Communications Manager, Internal Communications Manager, and PR Manager all reconcile to the same ¥10,500,000. Brand roles ladder from an Assistant Brand Manager at ¥7,500,000 to a Brand Manager at ¥9,500,000, still below the Marketing Manager's ¥11,250,000.
With uniform two-guide coverage, marketing rows work best for pricing roles against each other rather than as precise absolutes. The full 19-role breakdown across both families, with the agency fee beside each median, lives in the dedicated guide to marketing salaries in Japan.
Digital Marketing and E-Commerce
Digital marketing splits from brand marketing as its own eight-role family, and the manager-to-specialist gap is the finding. A Digital Marketing Manager reconciles at ¥12,250,000 against a Digital Marketing Specialist at ¥6,500,000; an E-commerce Manager at ¥10,250,000 against an E-commerce Specialist at ¥6,250,000. Head of Digital tops the family at ¥16,250,000, with sources spanning ¥10,000,000 to ¥20,000,000. CRM Manager, at ¥12,000,000, is the only three-guide row.
The manager premium in this family roughly doubles the specialist salary, and the fee column doubles with it. The same guide prices digital marketing salaries row by row, alongside the brand family it ladders into.
Business Support, Engineering and Retail
Three small families close out the index, all on two-guide coverage throughout.
Business Support
Five roles, from a Receptionist at ¥4,775,000, the lowest median anywhere in the index, to an Office Manager at ¥10,000,000. The Office Manager band, ¥8,000,000 to ¥12,000,000, is one of the tightest top rows in any function.
Engineering and Manufacturing
Two roles so far: a Design Engineer at ¥8,000,000 and a Field Application Engineer at ¥10,125,000, the latter with sources spanning ¥7,000,000 to ¥15,000,000. The broader engineering function grows as future guide editions add poolable titles.
Retail
Three management roles: Visual Merchandising Manager at ¥8,500,000, Merchandising Manager at ¥11,000,000, and Retail Operations Manager at ¥11,250,000, the last with sources spanning ¥6,000,000 to ¥15,000,000.
Across all three families, read the rows as reference bands; two guides corroborate a figure without pinning it.
The Agency Fee Beside Every Salary
Every fee in the index is computed one way: 35% of theoretical annual salary. That figure is monthly pay plus fixed allowances times twelve, plus bonus, excluding commuting allowance, and it is the fee base the recruitment industry prices against. Because it approximates total compensation rather than base pay, the fee runs larger than a team pricing against base salary expects.
The 35% rate is the market-standard opening figure. Observed quotes sit between 30% and 40%, and the statutory cap of 50% sits far above where anyone actually prices. Across over 30,000 licensed placement offices, the opening rate holds remarkably stable; recruitment fees in Japan covers why the structure sits where it does.
The engagement model moves the rate more than negotiating does. Exclusive engagements price nearer 25%, contingency at the 35% standard: on an ¥11,000,000 salary, those ten points are ¥1,100,000 in fee on a single hire. The detail lives in the comparison of search models, with exclusive search and contingency search covering how each one prices, and the model choice moves the rate most in any fee negotiation.
One distinction matters for the comparison. The agency fee is the price of the placement itself. The employment on-cost that payroll and statutory insurance add is a separate burden, recurring every year the person stays. Different number, different lane. To run the numbers on any role in the index, the calculator opens at ¥10,000,000; type a consensus median, say the Cloud Engineer's ¥11,000,000, into Annual Salary. It holds the market rates by default, 35% for contingency and 25% for exclusive, and returns the agency fee in yen beside the internal admin and vacancy costs, with a running total for each model.
Every field stays editable, so a Finance Manager's ¥12,250,000 or a CFO's ¥33,250,000 recalculates the instant it is typed. The salary was always the easy half of the total cost to hire in Japan. The fee is the number no guide prints, and it is the half the hiring side controls.
Fee defaults are industry-typical (35% of theoretical annual salary), not attributed to any single guide; see datasetVersion in the methodology section.
How the Consensus Index Is Built
The index reconciles 181 roles from the five published guides. Coverage is uneven by design, because not every guide prints every role: 126 roles are informed by two guides, 31 by three, 19 by four, and 5 by all five.
Basis varies by publisher. Two of the five guides print base salary and three print total compensation, and 132 of the 181 roles blend both bases, which is why the fee, computed on theoretical annual salary, sits closer to the total-comp figure than to base.
Guides pool onto one role only after passing a consistency gate: the ratio between publisher midpoints stays under 1.8 and the ranges overlap. Title collisions are held apart rather than averaged into a false middle. A junior Financial Controller at ¥6,000,000 to ¥10,000,000 was held out of the senior Financial Controller role at ¥12,000,000 to ¥25,000,000, so the senior median isn't dragged down by a different job listed under the same title. The pipeline is deterministic; no language model touches a number.
Attribution runs on one hard rule. Every salary cell traces verbatim to a named guide's published edition. The fee column carries no publisher attribution: it is the industry-typical 35% overlay, and no code path can emit a fee tied to a guide. Sources are the current 2026 editions. datasetVersion: 2026.07.
AirTA is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the publishers named above; their names appear solely to identify data sources. The consensus figures are independently compiled factual data, and no publisher's guide is reproduced in whole or in part.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Salary Guides Does the Index Include
Five: Michael Page, Robert Walters, Hays, Morgan McKinley, and Robert Half, all current 2026 editions. Each role's median is drawn from every guide that publishes the title, and guides pool only when their midpoints sit within a 1.8 ratio and their ranges overlap. Coverage is printed beside every figure.
Are the Salaries Base Pay or Total Compensation
Both, disclosed per source. Two guides publish base salary, three publish total compensation, and 132 of the 181 roles blend the two bases. The agency fee is charged on theoretical annual salary, the fuller number, which is one of the terms worth pinning down in writing before signing an agency.
What Is Theoretical Annual Salary
Theoretical annual salary is monthly pay plus fixed allowances times twelve, plus bonus, excluding commuting allowance. It is the fee base recruitment agencies in Japan price against, typically at a 35% opening rate. Because it approximates total compensation, the resulting fee runs higher than a calculation from base salary suggests.
How Much Do the Guides Disagree on One Role
It scales with seniority. A Cloud Engineer reconciles near ¥11,000,000 with all five guides reporting and agreeing. A Chief Financial Officer reconciles at ¥33,250,000, but the two guides covering the title span ¥15,000,000 to ¥70,000,000. Individual-contributor medians anchor firmly; executive medians are starting points at best.
How Often Is the Salary Data Updated
Each publisher issues its guide annually, and the index reads the current 2026 editions. Every salary cell traces verbatim to a named guide's published edition, and the reconciled dataset behind the tables and the calculator is versioned, currently datasetVersion: 2026.07, so the page and its numbers stay in sync.
From Benchmark to Budget
The reconciled median shows what a role pays; the fee column shows what the hire costs to acquire. A headcount request has to survive both figures, and together they inform whether to run the search in-house or through an agency at all. Foreign companies budgeting their first hires get the same benchmarks with free planning tools on the Japan market entry hiring hub. For talent acquisition teams, AirTA shows the fee beside the salary on every listing before any proposal is written. Post a Job to price the next hire with both numbers on the table.