Hi, I’m Kotaro Muramoto, CEO of JOBs Japan. Here’s a story that shows how combining technical skills, language ability, and communication with offshore teams can lead to an excellent role in Japan.

Candidate Profile

• Nationality: Vietnam

• Experience:

  • ~3 years working in development for a Japanese IT company

  • ~6 months specifically as a Bridge SE (offshore coordination role)

• Technical Skills:

  • Backend Java development

  • Frontend experience with JavaScript & HTML

  • Strong in algorithm/data-optimization, code efficiency, SQL tuning

  • Unit & integration testing using JUnit, Mockito

  • Familiar with production-Linux environments, log analysis, infrastructure aspects

• Role Skills / Responsibilities:

  • Requirements definition & basic design + implementation

  • Managing or liaising with offshore development team in Vietnam

  • Ensuring code quality & performance (testing, optimization)

  • Participating in system operations & maintenance

• Language: Japanese Level N2 — enough to communicate with both local Japanese teams and offshore Vietnamese teams fluently.

The Role & Company

• Industry / Sector: Travel services — inbound tourism, hotel & transport arrangements, tours. A large travel company in Japan with an offshore development center in Vietnam.

• Position Type: Bridge SE + System Engineer role. You’ll be responsible for coordinating between the Japanese headquarters and offshore team, managing parts of development & operations of travel/tour reservation systems and online travel agency (OTA) platforms.

What Made This a Strong Fit

1. Bridge role with technical skills
   The candidate could not only code, but understand design phases, testing, and also communicate effectively across cultures. That combo is rare and highly valued.

2. Full-stack mindset even if mostly backend
   Knowledge of frontend (JavaScript/HTML) plus backend optimization and working in production setups gave broader value — helps reduce handoffs, misunderstandings, and delays.

3. Emphasis on quality and optimization
   Strong ability in writing tests, performance tuning, log-based debugging. Companies appreciate engineers who care about stability, quality, and not just features.

4. Language + communication
   Japanese N2 proficiency provided confidence to the employer that the candidate could manage requirements, design discussions, and coordination with Japanese staff as well as offshore teams.

Outcome

• Salary: Approximately ¥4,800,000 / year

• Position: Bridge SE with Java, with responsibilities including system development, operations, quality, and offshore team interaction.

• Expectation: Immediate contribution as someone who already knows both sides — technical and communication — of offshore‐based development.

What You Can Learn & Apply to Your Job Search

• Bridge roles are powerful: If you can combine dev + liaison / coordination skills with offshore teams, this opens up many opportunities.

• Raise quality awareness: Know testing frameworks, do clean, optimal code, understand where bottlenecks can occur.

• Language matters: N2 or equivalent helps a lot in bridging gaps, clarifying ambiguous specs, avoiding rework — all of which companies pay for.

• Show both breadth & depth: Be ready to talk about architecture, testing, deployment, as well as optimizations, frontend + backend, or infrastructure when applicable.

Thinking about your next move?

If you are a Vietnamese (or foreign) engineer with Java experience, interest or experience coordinating with offshore teams, and Japanese skill (N3-N2 or working towards that), there are roles like this that value exactly that mix.