This single visa category actually bundles three distinct work areas, which is why the name is such a mouthful:
- Engineer — IT, software development, and manufacturing/technical engineering roles.
- Specialist in Humanities — marketing, HR, finance, consulting, legal, and academic-adjacent roles requiring specialized knowledge.
- International Services — roles that specifically require foreign-language or cross-cultural skills: translation, interpreting, international trade, and similar.
It covers the majority of white-collar foreign professionals working in Japan. Eligibility generally requires a bachelor's degree (or higher) in a field relevant to the job, or, for some roles, 10+ years of relevant work experience in lieu of a degree. The job itself needs to genuinely require that specialized background — Immigration checks that the role and your qualifications actually line up, not just that you have a degree of some kind.
Your employer applies for the Certificate of Eligibility; once issued, you take it to an embassy for the visa stamp. Typical timelines run 1–3 months for the CoE and another 5–10 business days for visa issuance — see Processing Times for more detail, and apply early if you have a fixed start date.
Back to Work Visas.