Which Jobs a Foreigner May Hold in Indonesia: Work Permit Eligibility by Position and Sector

Updated 13 October 2026 · Okusi Associates · All guides

Most of what is written about Indonesian work permits describes the process: the Foreign Worker Utilisation Plan (Rencana Penggunaan Tenaga Kerja Asing, RPTKA), its ratification by the Ministry of Manpower, the USD 100 monthly levy, the visa and stay permit that follow. The question clients actually ask comes before any of that. A resort developer in eastern Indonesia wrote to Okusi Associates wanting to bring in fourteen construction workers from India, then, having read a little, narrowed the request to a civil engineer and a foreman, and asked for an honest assessment of what was legally workable rather than visa processing. The answer, which this guide sets out in full, was that the engineer was possible, the foreman was not, and the developer’s own company was probably the wrong sponsor for either. Three tests decide every such case: the employer, the position, and the person. The process only starts once all three are passed.

The employer

Only a corporate body may employ a foreigner in Indonesia. PP 34/2021, the government regulation on foreign workers, limits employers to the entities in its Art 3, which for ordinary commerce means a limited liability company (including a PMA company), a foundation, or a registered foreign business entity, and its Art 9 prohibits a natural person from employing a foreign worker at all. The single-shareholder micro-company is excluded by the implementing ministerial regulation (Permenaker 8/2021, Art 3). A villa owner, a family, or an individual investor cannot sponsor anyone.

Less obvious, and the point on which the resort developer’s plan turned, is that the employer’s business sector decides which positions it may apply for. The list of positions open to foreigners is organised by sector, following the business classification (KBLI) on the company’s business identification number (NIB), and the online application system offers an employer the positions for its registered sector. A company whose only classification is real estate cannot select a construction position, because there is none in its list. Practitioners report a classification mismatch as the commonest reason an application fails verification, and the Ministry’s own helpdesk lists “position not available” among its standard technical queries. The remedy is either to add the relevant classification to the company, which in construction brings a licensing regime of its own, or to have the right company sponsor the worker. For building a resort, the right company is almost always the contractor.

The position

The list is Kepmenaker 228/2019, the Ministry of Manpower’s decision on positions that may be held by foreign workers, still recorded as in force on the Ministry’s legal database in October 2026. It replaced nineteen sector-by-sector decisions issued between 2011 and 2015 with one annex of eighteen categories: construction; real estate; education; manufacturing; water and waste; transport and warehousing; arts and entertainment; accommodation and food service; agriculture, forestry and fisheries; rental, employment and travel services; finance and insurance; health and social work; information and telecommunications; mining; electricity and gas; wholesale and retail trade; other services; and professional, scientific and technical activities. The decision commits the Ministry to review the lists at least every two years. Whether that has happened since 2019 is not visible from the published instrument, and advisers who assume the 2019 list has since expanded are guessing.

The contents of the lists tell more than their length. Every position carries an occupational code from the international classification (ISCO), and in the construction category, with 181 positions, every one of them falls in the two top groups: managers (country manager, finance manager, construction manager, general site manager, project manager, quality control manager and the like) and professionals (civil engineer, structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, geophysicist, architect, quantity surveyor, topographer, contract expert, IT systems advisor). There is no supervisor, technician, tradesman, operator or labourer anywhere in it. A foreman is an occupation in the third ISCO group, and it does not appear. The real estate category is shorter still: general manager, deputy general manager, retail development general manager, corporate planning manager, marketing manager and marketing specialist, six positions, none of them technical. A real estate company that wants to employ an engineer has no position to put them in.

Two things sit outside the lists. First, a commissioner or director who does not handle personnel may be a foreigner in any sector; the decision says so in terms, and the company law imposes no nationality requirement. Second, where a position an employer needs is not in the annex, the Minister or a delegated official may still grant permission. That clause exists and is used, but it is a discretion exercised on a justification letter, not an entitlement, and a company planning on it should plan on time and on the possibility of refusal.

The closed list is shorter and absolute. PP 34/2021 Art 11 bars foreigners from any position dealing with personnel or human resources, and Kepmenaker 349/2019 itemises eighteen of them: personnel director, industrial relations manager, human resources manager, the supervisors of personnel development, recruitment, placement and career development, personnel administrator, personnel and career specialist, personnel specialist, career adviser, employment adviser, job counsellor, employment mediator, training administrator, interviewer, job analyst and occupational safety officer. Art 10 adds that a foreigner may not hold two positions in the same company; a director who also wants to be the finance manager needs an Indonesian in one chair or the other.

The person

PP 34/2021 Art 4, repeated in Permenaker 8/2021 Art 4, sets the floor for the individual: education matching the position, at least five years of competence or work experience matching the position, and a commitment to transfer skills to an Indonesian understudy. The Director handling the application has an express power to refuse where the qualifications do not match the position (Permenaker 8/2021 Art 18). In practice this means a degree in the field for professional positions, and a documented career for managerial ones; a 28-year-old with a diploma and three years’ experience will not be ratified as a civil engineer whatever the employer writes.

The understudy obligation is real but narrower than it is often described. The employer must name an Indonesian understudy, train them, and repatriate the foreigner when the contract ends (PP 34/2021 Art 7), and the foreigner must transfer expertise to that understudy. Directors, commissioners, heads of representative offices, foundation officers and workers on temporary assignments are exempt from the understudy and Indonesian-language requirements (Art 7(3)). The rule that a company must employ ten Indonesians for every foreigner, still repeated on many websites, was introduced in June 2015 and revoked in October 2015 (Permenaker 35/2015); neither PP 34/2021 nor its implementing regulation contains any ratio, though sector regulators in mining and oil and gas set their own.

Directors and commissioners get one further concession that is easy to overstate. PP 34/2021 Art 19 exempts from the RPTKA requirement a director or commissioner “with a certain shareholding”, which in practice is the shareholding that supports an investor stay permit. A salaried foreign director who holds no qualifying shares needs a ratified RPTKA like any other employee. Where a foreigner does need one, their visa index follows the seniority of the position: the E25 series for commissioners, directors, deputy directors, general managers, managers and supervisors, and E23 for professionals and experts.

Construction, the sector that asks most

Construction has a second layer of rules, because the construction services law (UU 2/2017, Art 74) and its implementing regulation (PP 22/2020 as amended by PP 14/2021, Art 28E to 28H) add their own conditions on top of the manpower regime:

a foreign construction worker may only work at the expert (ahli) qualification level, in a listed position; the operator and technician levels are closed;
before starting work the worker must be recorded with the Ministry of Public Works, after a competence-equivalence process run by the construction services board (LPJK);
equivalence assesses a degree of at least bachelor level, a portfolio of at least five years’ experience, and a competence certificate or equivalent recognition from the home country, each against the position to be held;
the worker must transfer knowledge and technology to an Indonesian counterpart.

Set against the resort developer’s request, the three tests give plain answers. The civil engineer passes the position test, since the construction category lists the role, and passes the person test if they hold an engineering degree and five years of relevant work, with LPJK equivalence and registration to follow the RPTKA. The foreman fails the position test outright: no supervisory or trade position exists in the construction list, and the construction law closes the technician and operator levels regardless. The fourteen construction workers were never a possibility. And the sponsor for the engineer is the licensed contractor building the resort, whose classification carries the construction positions, rather than the developer whose classification carries six marketing and management roles. A developer determined to employ the engineer directly has to become, in part, a construction company first.

Roles clients ask about

Role	Sector list	Standing
Director or commissioner, not handling personnel	Any	Open; RPTKA still required unless a qualifying shareholder
General manager, finance manager, marketing manager	Most categories	Listed
Civil, structural, mechanical or electrical engineer	Construction	Listed; expert level, LPJK equivalence and registration
Architect, quantity surveyor	Construction	Listed; as above
Site foreman, supervisor of trades	Construction	Not listed; technician and operator levels closed by the construction law
Skilled tradesman, machine operator, labourer	Any	Not listed anywhere
Human resources manager, recruiter, training administrator	Any	Prohibited
Engineer employed by a real-estate company	Real estate	No such position in the list; the contractor sponsors, or the company adds a construction classification
Position not in any list	Any	Ministerial discretion on application

What it costs to be wrong

An employer using a foreign worker without a ratified RPTKA is fined Rp 6,000,000 per position, per person, per month, counted from the worker’s entry into Indonesia up to six months (PP 34/2021 Art 37), with suspension of the employer’s future applications and revocation of existing ratifications available alongside the fine. The worker who does work the stay permit does not allow risks up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to Rp 500,000,000 under the immigration law (UU 6/2011 Art 122), and the same article reaches the person who gave them the opportunity. A worker brought in on a visit visa to do a job that no RPTKA could have covered has put both employer and employee inside that article from the first day on site.

Where Okusi fits

Okusi Associates has handled foreign work authorisation since 1997, from Jakarta, Bali and Batam, and the first thing it does with a request like the resort developer’s is test the role against the sector list and the person against the qualification floor, before any fee is taken, because an application that will fail verification costs the client time and the company’s standing with the Ministry. Where the role is workable, the Work Permit & Visa - Complete (KITAS & RPTKA) package, at US$ 921 per year, covers RPTKA ratification, the levy, the visa and the stay permit, with BALI - New Work Permit & Visa (KITAS & RPTKA) - BOD and BATAM - Work Permit & Visa (KITAS, RPTKA, Smart Card) for those offices. A foreign shareholder who will run the company takes the Investor’s KITAS Complete route instead, at US$ 1,312 for a two-year permit, and needs no RPTKA. Visitors who will meet, inspect and negotiate rather than work travel on the Multiple Entry Business Visa. Where a worker is already in the country on the wrong permit, Immigration Advocacy deals with immigration directly.