Equipment Is Japan's Pay Ceiling: Tokyo Electron ¥13.54M vs Renesas ¥7.50M — and ASML's €119,900 Is Europe's Only League Table

Silicon Levels — Japan & Europe. The conclusion first: in Japan, the pay ceiling is equipment, not devices. Tokyo Electron’s filing average is ¥13.54M; device maker Renesas’ parent average is ¥7.50M. Europe does not publish a table like Japan’s at all. The only hard, citable anchor is computed from ASML’s own annual report — about €119,900 of wages per FTE. For NXP, Infineon and STMicroelectronics, European Senior pay is not in the public data. Japanese figures are from company securities reports verified on 2026-10-22; the ASML figure is from its SEC-filed annual report.

30-Second Summary

• Japan’s ceiling (filing average): Tokyo Electron ¥13.54M (FY ended Mar 2025, parent employees). An equipment maker tops the table.
• Kioxia has two numbers. Kioxia Holdings ¥13.07M (+14%) and the operating company ¥9.42M (+16%). Different populations — both are printed, always together.
• Sony’s ¥11.55M is an HQ population. It is the Sony Group parent average. Sony Semiconductor Solutions is unlisted and files nothing of its own — it must not be read as semiconductor-engineer pay.
• Renesas ¥7.50M is primary-sourced: ¥7,495,552 parent average in its Annual Securities Report FY2025 (6,025 employees). Industry color agrees: equipment makers averaged ¥13.59M vs device makers ¥7.76M.
• Europe’s only anchor: ASML 2024 wages & salaries of EUR 5,001.2M ÷ 41,697 average FTE = about EUR 119,900 wages per FTE — roughly 34% above the Dutch all-engineer gross benchmark (EUR 89,732). All roles, worldwide; total employer cost per FTE is a separate EUR 144,800.
• Europe’s gap: no published Senior medians exist for NXP, Infineon or STMicro in Europe. Infineon’s €142–166K is a single role page (weak) and STMicro’s €41–48K is one Catania posting — labeled as such, never as averages.

Japan: the Metric Mapping

Japan’s average salary comes from the annual securities report (yukashoken hokokusho). Its population is employees of the filing parent company only — consolidated subsidiaries are excluded. It includes bonuses and overtime, and it is not engineer-only.

*Figure 1: Japanese semiconductor parent-company filing averages. Kioxia Holdings and Sony Group are HQ populations. Source: company securities reports FY2025; Kioxia via Bloomberg / TrendForce.

Japan, Company by Company

Tokyo Electron — ¥13.54M. The FY ended Mar 2025 average is ¥13,543,000, with average age 43.5 and tenure 14.9 years (per secondary analysis citing the securities report). A top-tier equipment maker sits at the ceiling of Japan’s pay table — the first conclusion of this article.

Kioxia — Holdings ¥13.07M, operating ¥9.42M. For the latest fiscal year as reported in Jun 2026, the holding company average rose 14% and the operating company’s 16% (Bloomberg via TrendForce). Same structure as ASE in our Taiwan article: a holding-company average describes a small HQ population, so it is only meaningful printed next to the operating figure.

Sony Group (parent) — ¥11.55M. The FY ended Mar 2025 parent average. The image-sensor leader, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, is unlisted and files no securities report of its own. The honest entry for Sony in a semiconductor pay table is: “Group parent ¥11.55M (HQ population); subsidiary figure does not exist.”

Renesas — ¥7.50M, primary-sourced. The Annual Securities Report FY2025 (year ended Dec 2025) gives a parent average of ¥7,495,552 across 6,025 employees, average age 48.5, tenure 23.4 years. A top automotive-MCU maker averages close to half the equipment leader. Renesas separately discloses a global consolidated median of ¥6M (FY2024 pay-ratio disclosure; CEO ¥1,076M, a 179:1 ratio) — a different population, kept out of the ranking above.

SCREEN Holdings — gap. Its securities-report average was not retrieved. Recruiter-page model salaries (leader ¥8.5M / section chief ¥12M) are posting figures, not filing averages, and are not used.

Industry Color Points the Same Way

Flagged as color, because the sourcing chain is weak: a Nikkei report relayed by Sina Finance and reposted (2026-10-12) puts 8 Japanese semiconductor materials/equipment/device firms at an average of ¥10.75M in the FY ended Mar 2026 (+25% vs 2021), with 4 equipment makers averaging ¥13.59M, 2 device makers ¥7.76M and 2 materials makers ¥8.07M (Disco ¥18.79M). The direction matches the primary figures above — equipment ¥13.5M-class, devices ¥7.5M-class. It is the mirror image of the US, where device and fabless pay leads.

Europe: the Metric Mapping

Europe has no Levels.fyi-style senior league table. The only hard cross-company metric is annual-report personnel expense divided by average FTE. Its population is all payroll employees, worldwide, and its nature is employer cost (wages + social + pension + share-based pay) — not take-home salary.

Figure 2: The citable European figures, each labeled with its own basis — ASML wages per FTE (all employees), the Dutch engineer gross benchmark, and one STMicro role posting. Source: ASML Annual Report 2024 (SEC) Note 18; ERI; Wizbii posting.

Europe, Company by Company

ASML — about €119,900 wages per FTE (primary). The 2024 annual report (Note 18) reports wages & salaries of EUR 5,001.2M and an average of 41,697 payroll FTE. Divided: about EUR 119,900 per FTE. Including social charges, pension and share-based pay, total personnel expense of EUR 6,037.4M is about EUR 144,800 of employer cost per FTE. Of the 41,697 FTE, 21,811 are Netherlands-based. The average STI bonus payout was 17% of base gross salary (2025 report).

Against the Dutch all-engineer gross benchmark of EUR 89,732 (ERI), €119,900 is roughly 34% higher — with the standing caveat that one side is an all-role employer-cost average and the other an engineer gross benchmark. Different populations, labeled.

NXP — no European company data. No Levels.fyi EU company data for NXP was found. Location medians exist — a Mechanical Engineer median total comp of EUR 59,871 in the Eindhoven metro, a Netherlands ASIC Engineer average of EUR 60,071 — but those are location figures, not NXP figures, and they are not presented as NXP pay anywhere in this article.

Infineon — one weak role page. Infineon had 58,060 employees at end-Sep 2024 (FY2024). A Levels.fyi Germany Solution Architect page shows a common range of EUR 142K–166K — a role page, not a Senior engineer median, and labeled weak. Its personnel-expense total was not retrieved (gap).

STMicroelectronics — one posting. No EU company median exists. The one primary data point is an Application Engineer posting in Catania, Italy, at EUR 41,000–48,000 gross plus variable, disclosed under EU pay-transparency rules. A posting is not an average, and one Italian site does not represent the company.

The Verdict: Japan Has a Table, Europe Has a Gap

Japan’s disclosure regime forces averages into the open, so a ranking exists — and its verdict is clear: equipment is the ceiling (¥13.54M) and devices sit far below (¥7.50M).

Europe’s honest verdict is different. ASML’s filing yields one hard anchor — about €120K of wages per employee — and for NXP, Infineon and STMicro, European Senior pay simply is not published. Substituting US figures to complete the table is the one move this series will not make. The gap itself is the finding: it is the current state of European semiconductor pay transparency.

Sources and Limits

All figures are collected here, once. Japan: Tokyo Electron ¥13,543,000 from secondary analysis citing the securities report (https://note.com/hip_sedum4970/n/nc99be0258faf); Sony Group parent ¥11.55M from secondary analysis citing the securities report (https://note.com/corerise/n/n3c031a1af8a4); Kioxia Holdings ¥13.07M (+14%) and operating company ¥9.42M (+16%) from Bloomberg via TrendForce, 2026-06-24 (https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/06/24/news-kioxia-executive-pay-reportedly-surges-multiple-fold-converging-toward-samsung-and-sk-hynix-peer-levels/); Renesas parent ¥7,495,552 (6,025 employees, avg age 48.5, tenure 23.4 yrs) is PRIMARY — Annual Securities Report FY2025 (https://www.renesas.com/en/document/rep/annual-securities-report-2025?queryID=464da29091632247a7c23efb725f838c); Renesas global median ¥6M and CEO ¥1,076M (179:1) from the FY2024 report’s pay-ratio disclosure (https://www.renesas.com/en/document/rep/annual-securities-report-2024?r=25469341). The industry aggregate (8 firms ¥10.75M; equipment ¥13.59M; devices ¥7.76M; materials ¥8.07M; Disco ¥18.79M) is a weak chain — Nikkei via Sina Finance, reposted by Binance Square, 2026-10-12 (https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/10-12-2026-stocks-japan-semiconductor-suppliers-average-pay-rises-25-since-2021-on-ai-demand-376321068390935) — used as color only. The only Levels.fyi Japan item found is a Sony Optical Engineer role page (top package ¥14.28M, range from ¥9.84M) — a single-role page, not a Senior median (https://www.levels.fyi/companies/sony/salaries/optical-engineer). Europe: ASML Annual Report 2024, Note 18 (SEC filing, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/937966/000093796625000011/a2024annualreportbasedon.htm) — wages & salaries EUR 5,001.2M, average payroll FTE 41,697, total personnel expense EUR 6,037.4M, NL-based FTE 21,811; STI payout average 17% of base from the 2025 report (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/937966/000162828026011377/asml-2025xannualxreportx.htm). Infineon remuneration report (board comp only): https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon+Remuneration+Report+2024.pdf?fileId=8ac78c8b92bced620193694e3a94009a. NXP location context (NOT NXP data): https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/t/mechanical-engineer/locations/metropoolregio-eindhoven and https://www.levels.fyi/en-gb/t/hardware-engineer/title/asic-engineer/locations/netherlands. STMicro Catania posting: https://en.wizbii.com/company/stmicroelectronics/job/application-engineer-221249. Limits: Japanese filing averages are parent-company, all-employee figures (bonuses and overtime included), not engineer-only and not consolidated; fiscal years differ (Mar 2025 for TEL/Sony, Dec 2025 for Renesas, latest FY as reported Jun 2026 for Kioxia); TEL and Sony figures rest on secondary analyses citing the filings, while Renesas is primary; the Kioxia Holdings and Sony Group figures describe HQ populations; Sony Semiconductor Solutions is unlisted, so no standalone figure can exist; SCREEN Holdings’ filing average was not retrieved (gap); the ASML per-FTE figures are worldwide all-role employer-side values, not engineer take-home; no Levels.fyi EU Senior medians exist for ASML/NXP/Infineon/STMicroelectronics (gap); Infineon’s personnel-expense total was not retrieved (gap); the Infineon Solution Architect range is a single role page and the STMicro figure a single posting — neither is a company average. JPY figures are kept in JPY; no dataset FX rate was applied.

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FAQ

Q1. Which Japanese semiconductor company pays the most on filing averages? Tokyo Electron, at ¥13.54M (¥13,543,000, FY ended Mar 2025, parent-company average). Kioxia Holdings prints ¥13.07M but describes a small HQ population; its operating company is ¥9.42M. All of these are all-employee parent averages, not engineer-only pay.

Q2. What do Sony’s semiconductor engineers earn? It is not published. Sony Semiconductor Solutions is unlisted and files no securities report. The only Sony filing figure is the Sony Group parent average of ¥11.55M — a holding-company (HQ) population, not SSS engineers.

Q3. What does an ASML engineer earn? There is no engineer-specific public figure. ASML’s 2024 annual report implies about €119,900 of wages per FTE across all roles and countries (wages & salaries EUR 5,001.2M ÷ 41,697 average FTE), and about €144,800 of total employer cost per FTE. That is an all-employee employer-side average, not an engineer salary or take-home pay.

Q4. What about Senior pay at NXP, Infineon and STMicroelectronics in Europe? It is not published. No Levels.fyi EU Senior medians were found for any of the three. The only data points are labeled fragments: an Infineon Solution Architect role page at €142–166K (weak, single role) and an STMicroelectronics Catania posting at €41–48K (one role, one site). US figures were not substituted.

One Last Question

Japan forces pay into the open and Europe does not — which regime would you rather job-hunt under? And for engineers eyeing ASML: is a €119,900 all-employee wage average a stronger signal than a glossy Senior band that no one has to publish?

Silicon Levels is VLSI Korea’s series comparing semiconductor pay on public data. The rule is one: same metric, same population, labeled — or no comparison.

More from the Silicon Levels series

• EDA Pay Ladder: Synopsys vs Cadence vs Siemens
• Memory Pay: Samsung vs SK hynix vs Micron
• Fabless Senior Pay Ranking
• Foundry Pay: TSMC vs Samsung vs Intel
• Materials Pay Transparency Report
• Equipment Pay: KLA, Applied, Lam, ASML, TEL
• Country Pay Showdowns: Korea, Taiwan, US, Netherlands, Germany
• Taiwan Pay Showdown: MediaTek vs TSMC

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