Working with me

How we communicate

Everything runs in writing: email, chat, issues, pull requests and documentation. Specifications, code, commit messages and code review are all handled in English.

Voice and video calls are in Japanese only. I do not conduct meetings in spoken English. If a call is genuinely needed we can work through an interpreter, but in most cases the same ground is covered faster in writing.

This suits a time difference rather than fighting it. Decisions land in a written record that both sides can re-read, which is where most remote projects go wrong when they rely on calls.

Hours and time zone

Time zone

Japan Standard Time (UTC+9)

Working hours

Roughly 09:00-18:00 JST on weekdays

Reply to enquiries

Within two business days as a rule

Overlap

JST overlaps the working day across East and Southeast Asia and Oceania. For Europe and the Americas, expect one exchange per day rather than a live back-and-forth.

Engagement and terms

Contract types

Time-based contracting at an hourly rate, or a fixed quote for work with a settled scope. Which fits better depends on how firm the requirements are; I am happy to advise.

Currency and payment

Invoiced in JPY, paid by bank transfer to a Japanese account. Remittance fees are normally borne by the sender.

NDAs

I can sign an NDA on your own template, including in English. Other English-language contracts are possible but depend on the terms, so raise them early.

Not available

On-site or co-located work, and synchronous cover during Japanese night hours. Both defeat the point of an asynchronous arrangement.

What I bring to remote work

I have worked remotely from Nagasaki on projects run out of Tokyo since 2023, and remote collaboration was already part of my work before that. The distance is not the interesting part; the working method is.

The work spans AI-backed web services, image and video processing, Windows applications and embedded firmware. Several of those projects involved handing software to people who were not engineers, which forces written specifications and documentation to be good enough to stand alone.

The Services section on the home page has the specifics of what I have built.