In this article, we would like to briefly explain each type of job in the Japanese IT industry for foreigners who are interested in the Japanese IT industry and students who are about to start job hunting.
If you want to understand the Japanese IT industry first, can check the article below explains the classification and structure of the Japanese IT Industry.
Contents
Jobs Types in the Japanese IT Industry
As is explained in the article above, in a survey conducted by Human Resociain March 2020 about the number of IT engineers around the globe, Japan was forth in it.
IT engineers can be broadly divided into four categories: infrastructure engineers, system operations engineers, application engineers, and system consultants.
From now we will briefly explain the occupations in each category.
Infrastructure Engineer
First of all, in the IT industry, infrastructure refers to the composite hardware, software, network resources and services required for the construction, design, operation, and management of an enterprise IT environment.
An engineer who is responsible for “design,” “build,” “maintenance,” and “operation” of infrastructure is called an infrastructure engineer.
An infrastructure engineer is made up of 5 types of engineers, which are server engineers, network engineers, storage engineers, database engineers, and cloud engineers.
Server Engineer
A server engineer is a technologist who designs and builds servers such as database server that stores information and internet server used generally internet.
Network Engineer
A network engineer is a technician who builds and maintains a computer network. Some specific tasks include designing network systems, building circuits and networks based on design documents, also managing and operating to maintain network systems.
※Recently, server engineers and network engineers called totally as an infrastructure engineers.
Storage Engineer
Storage engineer is literally an engineer who manages storage.
With the advancement that IT technology has made in these days, data maintenance becomes a very important task. Depending on how the data is handled, it can be probably lead to serious troubles. One of the roles of a storage engineer is to prevent these cases. Also, when a company handles a large amount of data, it is the job of the storage engineer to make the data available in an efficient way.
DataBase Engineer
Database engineers mainly develop and create databases using MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, based on customer needs and opinions.
After developing the database, its management and operation is also part of their work.
Cloud Engineer
Currently, the operation of services and data on the cloud is becoming mainstream. A cloud engineer is an engineer who develops a system for designing, building, operating and maintenance all on the cloud.
Since most web applications started using cloud computing systems, the demand for cloud engineers will increase further in the future.
System Operations Enigenner
There are two types of system operations engineers, one is called DevOps engineer and the other one is SRE engineer.
DevOps Engineer
First of all, DevOps is a technical term created based on the idea that developers and operators work together to develop faster.
Being a DevOps engineer means creat and operate infrastructure environments like the cloud or modifying applications to improve development and operations. Unlike the infrastructure engineer, the DevOps engineer has the feature that when something goes wrong, he or she can take actions such as modifying the application by himself.
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
The SRE is an engineer who aims to improve the performance, availability, expandability, security to secure the reliability of the IT system.
Some works carried out by a SRE Engineer are:
- Design and Construction of an Infrastructure (Server or Network)
- Monitoring and alert designation
- Troubleshooting
- Operations Automation
Application Engineer
Application engineer is involved in the development of the system and applications on the PC that we normally use. When people generally talk about IT engineers, what people tend to imagine is an application engineer. However, the skills required for application engineers differ depending on the purpose, so this time we would like to introduce four types of application engineers.
Embedded Engineer
An embedded engineer is an engineer who creates programs used for familiar products such as automobiles and home appliances.
Packaging Engineer
A package software is a software developed by a software company for use by many customers. Engineers who are responsible for the additional development and maintenance of such packages (antivirus software, etc.) are called packaging engineers.
Front-end Engineer
Before we start talking about front-end engineers, let us explain what’s front-end means.
The front-end is the part that operates on the client-side (where the user can interact with the product directly).
Front-end engineers are engineers who design and implement front-end parts with using HTML, CSS, JavaScript (jQuery) according to the design created by web designer.
Back-end Engineer
Firstly, back-end means the part that operates on the server-side (where the client can not interact with the product directly).
A back-end engineer is an engineer who performs coding of server-side in the building of Web services, EC sites, and also the construction of a database system on the back-end side. Furthermore, a back-end engineer is responsible for defining, designing, and constructing requirements for server-side processing such as Web services and EC sites.
IT Consaltant
IT consultant is someone who proposes a system to solve the problems that a company has after understanding the current situation of the client and carrying out an analysis on it.
Conclusion
We hope that this article will give international students and new graduates who are starting job hunting in Japan a better understanding of the types of jobs in the IT industry in Japan.
