Japan Fair Trade Commission to Hire Chief Technology Specialist From Private Sector to Compete With Giant IT Firms

The Yomiuri Shimbun

13:59 JST, January 8, 2025

The Japan Fair Trade Commission plans to create a new position of chief technology specialist who leads a team of IT experts, recruiting personnel for the position from the private sector, sources said.

The “chief technologist” will receive a salary equivalent to that of administrative vice ministers, who are top administrative officials of government ministries.

Eyeing the new law to regulate giant tech companies that will take full effect by the end of the year, the JFTC is believed to be going to recruit a technical executive who can compete with those in giant tech firms in terms of technologies.

The chief technologist will lead a team of IT, cloud computing and security experts. The number of team members is expected to increase to about 10 in the future.

The chief technologist is also expected to be in charge of negotiations with the technical executives of major IT companies.

The person taking up the position will be employed as a part-time national civil servant with the remuneration planned to be about ¥8,500 per hour, which is the same level as that of the administrative vice ministers when their ¥1.4 million monthly salary is calculated on an hourly basis.

If the chief technologist works two days a week, the person will receive a monthly salary of more than ¥500,000.

Giant IT companies hire talented people from around the world, offering higher salaries. Some data show that the average annual income of an engineer at Google LLC’s Japan arm exceeds ¥20 million.

The JFTC is believed to have decided to pay the high salary for the position, having concluded that the highest possible salary would be necessary to hire a talented person who can compete with those at giant IT firms.

The JFTC allocated related funds to the draft budget for fiscal 2025. The timing of recruitment will be decided in the future.