The Intra-Company Transferee status (企業内転勤) exists for one situation: your employer is moving you from an office abroad to an office in Japan within the same corporate group. If that describes you, it is usually the easier route, because it waives the requirement that derails most work visa applications.
The degree requirement does not apply
Under the Engineer/Specialist status, your university major has to relate to your job, or you need ten years of experience instead. Intra-Company Transferee drops that entirely. What matters is your employment history with the group, not your education.
This is the reason a self-taught developer or a manager who studied something unrelated can be transferred into Japan when they could not have been hired into the same role from outside.
The one-year rule
You must have worked continuously at the overseas office for at least one year immediately before the transfer. Not a year at some point in your career: the twelve months directly preceding the move.
This catches people who join a company's overseas branch specifically in order to be transferred to Japan. The clock starts at your actual hire date, and immigration will check it against your employment records.
What counts as the same company group
The sending and receiving offices have to be genuinely related. Immigration accepts:
- Head office to branch office, or the reverse
- Parent company to subsidiary
- Subsidiaries of the same parent
- Affiliated companies where the shareholding relationship is documented
A loose partnership, a franchise relationship, or two companies that merely share a founder will not clear this. You will need corporate registry documents and a shareholding chart to prove the link.
The work itself is the same as Engineer/Specialist
The activities permitted mirror the Engineer, Specialist in Humanities and International Services categories: technical and professional office work. Manual and routine work is excluded exactly as it is there. The difference is entirely in how you qualify, not what you are allowed to do once you arrive.
Pay must match what a Japanese national would receive for the same role at the receiving office. Overseas salaries are converted and compared, and a transfer that leaves you on a home-country package well below the Japanese market rate can be questioned.
The status is tied to the transfer
This is the trade-off for the relaxed entry requirement. Your permission to be in Japan depends on the assignment continuing. If you resign and join an unrelated Japanese company, the status no longer covers you and you have to change to another status of residence before starting the new job.
Periods of stay run one, three or five years, generally matched to the length of the assignment. Renewals are straightforward as long as the posting continues and the corporate relationship is unchanged.
Planning for what comes after
Most transfers end. Two things are worth doing early if you might want to stay in Japan beyond the assignment:
- Check whether you would qualify for Engineer/Specialist independently. If your degree matches your work, changing status later is routine. If it does not, and you are relying on the ten-year experience route, count the years now.
- Run the Highly Skilled Professional points table. Transferees are often well-paid mid-career professionals who clear 70 points comfortably. HSP status is not tied to the assignment, gives a five-year period of stay, and shortens the wait for permanent residency to three years or one.
Time spent on Intra-Company Transferee status counts toward the residence requirement for permanent residency in the normal way, so the years are not wasted either way.
Where to go next
For the filing, see Certificate of Eligibility. If your assignment is ending and you are staying on, see Changing Your Status of Residence.
Back to Work Visas.