【System Engineer】To learn hardware and software technologies without boundaries, he decided to leave his hometown and come to Japan.

Working on development by acquiring knowledge from around the world

Currently, I am working mainly on software development at J-all. To be specific, that includes smartphone apps, database management tool, firmware, etc. ..I am working on everything (laugh).

Talking about my recent project, a baby breathing sensor, which we developed both software and firmware. The sensor is attached to a baby, if it cannot detect breathing for 15 seconds, the buzzer will automatically turn on to notify the parents. Breathing data is gathered and saved to the SD Card, which can be analyzed by PC and turned into a graph. In this project, I was mainly responsible for the development of the SD card control and the analysis system on PC, as well as the firmware that runs the hardware.

It was my first time to involve in firmware development. Searching from the internet and joining discussions on technical forums provides me a way to acquire knowledge on this area. As I can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Japanese, I have the advantage of being able to participate in different forums in Japan, US, China, etc.

Moving to the country of anime

It is my first time to work in Japan. Before I joined J-all, I worked in a software development company in Hong Kong for 7 years. After completing my master’s degree, I work as an engineer in the company. However, as it was a small-scale development company, there were limitation on the types of projects that I could work on. As I hoped to broaden my skills as an engineer, I felt like I reached a career bottleneck.

Around the same time, my wife mentioned “Let’s try living abroad”. That immediately prompted me to come up with an idea, “What about finding a new job overseas and widen our skills?”. Doraemon, Gundam, Evangelion..., I have been a big Fan of Japan anime since childhood. Furthermore, I have studied Japanese in High School, and since then I was able to speak a little Japanese. So, among different choice of jobs in China, US Silicon Valley, etc, I finally chose Japan.

I came to Japan with my wife by working holiday Visa. I attended Japanese lessons in language school, searched for new job online and found J-all through a Job advertisement.

Call the CEO directly and get a chance for an interview

In J-all, I can involve in both hardware and software development. In addition, as the demand of engineers involving in IoT development is increasing globally,I think there may be a big room for my career growth. I made a phone call to the mother company of J-all, System Device Technology. “May I speak to Mr. Honda, the CEO?” I said. It sounds reckless, isn’t it? (Laugh). However, Mr. Honda answered my call very politely.

“I am a foreigner who worked for 7 years in a software development company in Hong Kong.” I introduced my myself and hope for a chance for a recruitment interview. After that, I was granted for an interview opportunity and joined J-all as a result.

In fact, I have not completed my Japanese language course when I was hired. So, I started working in System Device Technology, 3 to 4 days a week as a part-time staff. At that time, I made use of my software development experience in Hong Kong, to work on updating software tools for internal system.

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【CHECK!】 Recruitment information
https://hikoma.jp/engineer-sysdt/job_offers
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Working in a global development team is my dream

I am now able to take on challenges on new areas and broaden my skills as I wished, which makes me feel very grateful and rewarding. In particular, the challenge on designing software that controls hardware within limited memory capacity, during my early days of firmware development, has been a great experience.

It is also great that I am now able to concentrate on my job in the field of development. In my previous job, my role was a team leader. It was also rewarding, but now I can concentrate more on my work as an engineer, so I feel that I am growing faster as an engineer than in the past.

It is challenging to learn new technologies one after another and at the same time to produce solid results in development projects, but we manage to accomplish that by repeated trial and errors. In addition to that, I also work as a back-up role to support my colleagues at J-all and other staff of System Device Technology.

In J-all, we emphasize on teamwork. By helping and cooperating with each other, it makes our team grow. I am always helped by other team members when I have enquiries on firmware, and on the other hand, I also support other team members whenever they encounter problems about software. This is how we established our relationship in the team.

Apart from these, I am also acting as an internal Chinese teacher. System Device Technology is running another business unit called Fiorente, where beauty sales representatives are sent to work in cosmetics brand shops. In recent years, shoppers from China have been increasing rapidly in Japan. And there are more chances that beauty sales representatives need to deal with them. If the staffs can understand Chinese, they can increase their ability to cope with these customers. That is why, I am also acting as a Chinese teacher to support Fiorente staffs.

For my previous job in Hong Kong, there were occasions of disagreements which may result in conflicts between teams. There may be cultural difference between Hong Kong and Japan, but in general, I feel teamwork in J-all works better.
As for my future goal, I wish to work more on hardware development. In particular, it would be ideal if we can form a global development team consisting of foreigners and Japanese and create new products out of that. I would like to contribute to the company in this way.

【CHECK!】 Recruitment information

System Device Technology is looking for active and independent person to join our team. If you wish to express your idea, don’t hesitate to apply, we would love to hear from you.

We are looking forward to your application!
List of job offers▷▷https://hikoma.jp/engineer-sysdt/job_offers