Headhunter Casey Abel spent four months trying to hire a data center architect for a Japanese automaker, including five meetings with the client — one with the top executive. In the end, the IT specialist joined an e-commerce company abroad for significantly more money.

"There's just a massive mismatch in salaries," said Abel, managing director at recruiter HCCR K.K., who has spent as long as a year trying to land some IT candidates. "You've got some engineers making ¥20 million ($170,000) a year. Then you try to fit them in the traditional manufacturer-based salary structure" where it should be between ¥7 million and ¥9 million.

Attracting the best information technologists is becoming increasingly important for Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. as they seek a bigger share of revenue from IT-driven services such as ride-hailing and cloud-based monitoring of vehicles. Nissan Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn has said Japanese carmakers can't afford to lose the "global war for talent" to new rivals like Uber Technologies Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc.