After he retired from football Jin Zhiyang would begin coaching for the Beijing team before he was offered a chance to become the Head coach of
Tibet in 1974. After staying with them for two seasons he would return to Beijing where he was offered the chance to coach the youth team and then the reserves until March 1985 when the club pushed for professionalism within the team and moved Jin to
Germany to study professional coaching before returning to Beijing where he continued studying before finally achieving his coaching badges. After the previous Head coach
Tang Pengju had a disappointing season with Beijing, Jin was promoted as the club's manager at the beginning of the 1995 league season and would immediately transform the team into genuine title contenders, achieving a runners-up position at the end of the season. While he couldn't go on to win the league title he would go on to win the 1996 and then 1997
Chinese FA Cup titles. Near the end of the 1997 Chinese league season the
Chinese Football Association would hire a foreign coach in
Bob Houghton to manage the
Chinese football team and Jin Zhiyang was brought in as an assistant coach to help him. This lasted until December 2008 when recently promoted top tier side
Tianjin Teda F.C. offered him their head coach position, taking this opportunity to return into management he would lead them at the start of the 1999 league season to a respectable seventh-place position at the end of the season. In 2000 Jin would return to the Chinese football team as their manager, but on only on a part-time caretaker basis to aid the team prepare for some important
2000 AFC Asian Cup qualification games. When he returned to Tianjin Teda F.C. he would once again achieve similar mid-table results from the previous season and leave the club at the end year. ==Honours==