I've been playing with the idea and researching migration to Japan as a professional for a couple of years, but before I start trying to put concrete plans together, I want to make sure my basic premise is accurate.

A bit about myself: I'm a software engineer by trade, specializing as a Site Reliability Engineer- a particularly in-demand specialty in both my home market (USA) as well as Japan. I have several years of experience in SRE roles, in addition to further experience in the IT industry more broadly. I hold a Bachelor's of Science in a relevant field of study, and I've traveled to Japan several times, with plans to do so again this May. For the past 2 years and change, I've been working as a consultant for the US branch of a Japanese company, which is unfortunately too many layers of separation to leverage an intra-company transfer to Japan, while also being a daily dose of how frustrating it can be to work for a Japanese company.

The above being said, having researched job postings in my field in Japan, I'm confident I could land a job with a company willing to sponsor a work visa, with acceptable compensation. Moreover, as I understand it, my combination of skills, qualifications, age, and salary (expectations) would allow me to pursue Highly Skilled Foreign Professional status with at least 80 points on the "Advanced Specialized Technical Activities" chart. With 80 points on the evaluation, in theory, I would be eligible to apply for permanent residency after 1 year of residing in Japan. As a permanent resident, several of the long-term logistics of staying in Japan get at least a little less stressful.

All of that is the theory, anyway. For those with experience with the HSP program (especially other tech people), what major detail am I overlooking that shoots a hole in this entire idea?

Questions I can't find concrete answers to:

• Does the Immigration Bureau care that I started doing SRE work in 2017, or that I've been employed in tech infrastructure roles since 2015?
  • Do my 8 months of unemployment during the first year of the covid pandemic have any impact?
  • How deep do they actually dive on this stuff?
• Is HSP a self-contained visa, or is it a supplemental status for the "standard" work visa? (I've seen it called both?)
• How do I shot web?
• Having worked in Japan as an HSP(i) would you do it again? What do you wish you'd known ahead of time?