Tokyo · Executive Search
Executive search in Japan.
We find Country Managers and go-to-market leaders for global technology vendors and consulting firms in Japan.
- Cybersecurity
- Data & AI
- Cloud & Infrastructure
- Enterprise Software
- Consulting
Mount Aspiring, New ZealandRemarkably similar to Yarigatake (槍ヶ岳) in Japan
Country Manager search is our focus.
11 of 12 mandates
Country Manager searches in 2026.
One further mandate is for a VP Sales.
Within the 11 Country Manager mandates
Succession: a successor for an established business.
Builder: leadership for a business being built in Japan.
As of 18 October 2026, including Q4 pipeline. Counts cover 12 mandates, including work in progress, not only completed appointments. The 92% figure uses all 12 mandates; the 64% / 36% split uses the 11 Country Manager mandates. Percentages are rounded.
Why Japan? Why Now?
86.4% of Japanese companies use generative AI in at least one business process, up from 55.2% a year earlier.
AI investment, cloud expansion and cybersecurity demand are driving Japan’s opportunity now. Explore the market figures and supporting company case studies.
Read the Japan market briefHiring a Japan Country Manager
A practical guide to running a Japan Country Manager search: define the mandate, assess candidates and plan for the leader’s first year.
A 111-page guide with practical scorecards, interview questions and first-year checklists.
Get the free guideMarkets
Who we work with.
We work with enterprise technology vendors and technology consulting firms in Japan, across cloud, data and AI, and cybersecurity. Murray Clarke oversees every search. Our technology and consulting partners lead work in their specialist markets.
01
Enterprise technology
Country Manager, President and go-to-market leadership for global technology companies in Japan. Our track record includes leadership appointments and team builds across our partners’ careers. References are available.
- Cloud and infrastructure
- Data and AI
- Cybersecurity
- Enterprise software
02
Technology consulting
Partner, Managing Director, Director and Senior Manager appointments inside consulting and technology services firms. The population is mapped by firm, practice and grade before anyone is approached.
- Cloud and infrastructure
- Data and AI
- Cybersecurity
How we help
What we do.
Aspiring Partners is a Tokyo search firm. Global technology companies come to us when they are starting in Japan, or when the person they need is one of only a handful in the country.
Our executive search practice focuses on senior hires in Japan. Recruitment outsourcing helps clients build the teams around them.
01
Executive search
Finding the local leadership you need to run your Japan office with confidence. Country Manager, President and the first-leader seats.
Support through appointment and onboarding
02
Embedded sourcing
Our partners build your local team quickly without the cost of traditional agencies, with a recruiter working inside your business rather than alongside it.
Referral mapping with Referable
03
Market narrative
Fixing the story so that the people you want actually want to work for you. In Tokyo the pitch decides the reply rate before the role does.
Board-ready pitch
We only take a role when we can name the target pool before we start. We will tell you if it is outside our scope.
Recruitment outsourcing
Your Japan hiring, with a recruiter inside your team.
From a part-time recruiter to a full RPO programme, we help run the hiring process, manage agencies and build direct candidate pipelines.
Explore OutsourcingTechnology built for RPO
Our RPO programmes run on Referable and Client Brief Pages, plus an agency portal and reporting.
The right people for the programme
We work with a range of independent recruiters and RPO alliance partners where required, bringing in the experience and capacity your Japan hiring needs. Aspiring Partners remains accountable for delivery.
Why Aspiring Partners
What we do differently.
Experience
In Japan executive search since 2003. Murray helped build three search firms before Aspiring Partners, his fourth. Experis Executive was his joint venture with ManpowerGroup, which later bought out his stake. He oversees every search.
Specialisation
We only work in enterprise technology and technology consulting: cybersecurity, data and AI, cloud and enterprise software. Our technology and consulting practices focus on these markets. Tech is what we know, so we can name the target pool before a search starts.
Our own search technology
We built the tools behind our searches: market mapping to identify the right people, Client Brief Pages to explain your opportunity, and Executive Profiles to show the evidence behind each candidate. Our partners direct the research, assess the candidates and lead the conversations.
Where you are
Where you are today.
Most searches start in one of three places. Where you are decides the leader you need and how the search is run.
01
No presence in Japan yet
You are selling into Japan from Singapore or the US, the pipeline is real, and you are deciding whether to put someone on the ground before the entity exists.
What you need
A first hire who can sell and build at the same time, and who is comfortable being employed through an EOR while the entity is set up.
Market entry02
A small team, no local leader
You have a small team in Japan reporting into APAC, revenue is growing, and nobody in the country owns the number.
What you need
A Country Manager who has done this scale before, can take over an existing team without losing it, and can carry the forecast to your board.
Executive search03
A leader who is not the right one
The seat is filled, the numbers are not moving, and you are talking internally about a replacement.
What you need
A confidential search run alongside the incumbent, with a shortlist that is real before anyone is told anything.
Track recordNot sure which one fits? That is worth a conversation.
Track record
Our track record in Japan.
Leadership appointments and team builds across our partners’ careers, including work at prior firms, alongside Partner-grade work inside consulting firms. We hold back candidate names because the people are identifiable, and we hold back the consulting firm names for the same reason. Every client listed will take a reference call.
- Workday
- Nutanix
- Splunk
- Celonis
- Recorded Future
- Fastly
- SUSE
- Chainalysis
- Zenity
- Rapid7
- Fivetran
- mabl
- Databricks
- Pure Storage
- GitHub
- Zendesk
- VMware
- Dell
- Glean
- DoiT
- and more available upon request
Examples from our partners’ careers in Japan. Work at prior firms is identified below.
Fastly
Country Manager · Secure internet
A confidential replacement. A digital-native, cloud-native sales leader hired out of a hyperscaler's Japan cloud business.
Chainalysis
Country Manager · Blockchain
Selling into Japanese law enforcement and financial regulators, where the buyer is institutional and the sale is credibility before product. The leader placed is now the hiring manager on the team build beneath him.
Big 4 consulting firm
Partner · Consulting
Placed multiple partners into Big-4 firms. These searches require time to build assurance for the candidate that they will receive sufficient support should they bring their clients and business with them.
Glean
First Country Manager · Enterprise AI
Placed the first Japan Country Manager as they look to rapidly scale locally, securing a proven builder for their market expansion.
Recorded Future
Country Manager · Cybersecurity
A confidential replacement to stabilise the team, then the leader who took the business through the merger into Mastercard.
They helped me hire the key leader to scale our Japan business, and the one to take us through the merger into Mastercard.DQ Li, VP Asia Pacific, Recorded Future
GitHub
First Country Manager · Developer Platform
Placed their first Japan Country Manager to launch their local business operations and successfully drive a thriving open-source community.
SUSE
Country Manager · Infrastructure
Country Manager hired out of a sitting country president role, then a senior partner executive into the same business.
Impressive research and a job well done. Happy to be a reference.Josep Garcia, VP Asia-Pacific, SUSE and Rancher
Workday
Embedded recruitment · SaaS
Murray led this work at Technology Futures, now Experis Executive, before Aspiring Partners. During the embedded recruitment programme, the go-to-market team grew from around five people to over fifty.
Nutanix
Exclusive agent · Datacenter
Exclusive agent through the build from five to fifty. Placed the majority of the go-to-market team, then later the majority of the Japan senior leadership team.
We almost exclusively found Murray to be our go-to recruiter. I highly recommend him.Matt Young, Nutanix
Splunk
Country Manager · Cybersecurity
Murray led this work at Experis Executive, before Aspiring Partners. The assignment included a Country Manager replacement and recruitment support as the team grew from around fifty to 120 people.
Instrumental in hiring key people, including Country Manager, and delivering RPO.Goh Hattori, Global Talent, Splunk
Celonis
Country Manager · SaaS
Murray led this Country Manager search at Experis Executive, before Aspiring Partners. The appointed leader subsequently grew the Japan team from a handful of people to over eighty.
Zenity
First country leader · Cybersecurity
An early-stage US vendor with no entity, no brand recognition in Japan and no local reference customer. Run exclusively, with a fee ceiling agreed because it was exclusive.
Rapid7
Placed twice · Cybersecurity
Country Sales Leader, then the sales engineer, brought out of a consulting firm rather than poached from a competitor.
Helped build our presence in Japan during a difficult time of year and for a very niche sector.Anwar McEntee, APJ Region Head, Rapid7
Zendesk
Country Manager · CX & SaaS
Placed the Japan Country Manager who successfully transitioned their business model from mid-market reliance to enterprise-level scale and success.
Fivetran
First enterprise seller · Data
The first enterprise sales lead in Japan, hired out of a consultancy and operational within ninety days.
Great job Murray. We are really happy with this key hire.TJ Chandler, Fivetran
mabl
Revenue team rebuild · AI
A US company that lost its Japan revenue team and needed it rebuilt. Briefed mid-December, two offers signed 30 January, through the New Year shutdown when the market is effectively closed.
Nice job. I appreciate you running at a very intense pace.Anthony Palladino, mabl
References
What our clients say.
Regional leaders and global heads of talent who have run searches with us. Every one of them has agreed to take a call.
Helped build our presence in Japan during a difficult time of year and for a very niche sector. Diligent, up front, and focused on delivering.
I've worked with the team for many years now and they helped me hire the key leader to scale our Japan business, and the one to take us through the merger into Mastercard. Great work.
Instrumental in hiring key people, including Country Manager, and delivering RPO. Their network in Japan is significant.
We almost exclusively found Murray to be our go-to recruiter. I highly recommend him.
One of the top recruiters VMware has worked with, not only in Japan, but across the whole of Asia Pacific. He is exceptional.
I see Murray as the only recruiter that really understands the markets he recruits into.
Every name above agreed to be listed and agreed to take a call. Ask whoever else you are speaking with for the same list, and see what comes back.
All eighteen referencesGuides
Guides for hiring in Japan.
Entity
EOR, GK or KK: which entity, and what each one costs
What each structure lets you offer a candidate, what it costs to stand up and run, and how long each takes before you can pay someone.
Reviewed September 2026
Budget
What a Japan team actually costs
Base, bonus, statutory burden and the real all-in number for a first team, set against what the market is currently paying rather than a headquarters benchmark.
Reviewed September 2026
Compensation
Country Manager compensation benchmarks
What Japan country leadership is paid by company stage and sector, with the split between base and variable, and where the offers that get accepted actually sit.
Reviewed September 2026
Next step
Build your team in Japan.
The most effective way to start is a direct conversation. Thirty minutes to go through your goals, your timing and what the market will actually support.
If the honest answer is that the person you want does not exist at the number you had in mind, you will hear that in the first conversation rather than in month four.