Deputy Director - Multiple Teams

GovTech is the lead agency driving Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives and public sector digital transformation. As the Centre of Excellence for Infocomm Technology and Smart Systems (ICT & SS), GovTech develops the Singapore Government’s capabilities in Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, Application Development, Smart City Technology, Digital Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity.  
 
At GovTech, we offer you a purposeful career to make lives better where we empower our people to master their craft through robust learning and development opportunities all year round. 
 
Play a part in Singapore’s vision to build a Smart Nation and embark on your meaningful journey to build tech for public good. Join us to advance our mission and shape your future with us today!  
 
Learn more about GovTech at tech.gov.sg.

How we build

About TradeNet

TradeNet is Singapore’s National Single Window for trade permit processing. It processes over 9 million permit applications annually across import, export and transshipment. As one of Singapore’s key trade systems, TradeNet is being brought in-house to strengthen technology ownership and long-term sustainability. 

How we build

Designated as critical IT infrastructure, we favor simple, durable technology choices over the latest trends. We prioritize systems that are easy to reason about, operate, and maintain for the long term.

We operate with high autonomy. Engineers are expected to think deeply, exercise sound judgement, and take ownership of technical decisions.  You own the code from technical design through to production. We practice and value honest feedback, practical decision-making and real impact.

TechOps is the horizontal engineering organisation that sits under every product squad and covers DevOps, Quality Engineering, Database Engineering, Security Operations, Production Support, and Observability. The goal is that product squads can ship independently within approved guardrails, without waiting on TechOps for routine operations.

This is an org-building role. You will hire across disciplines, set engineering standards, define delivery processes, and work closely with Architecture, Product, and programme leadership to make sure horizontal capabilities exist before squads need them.

Teams here use AI-assisted development workflows daily. You need to be comfortable with that and will drive adoption of these practices across TechOps.

[What you will be working on]

Organisation building & leadership

• Build, hire, and grow a multi-disciplinary TechOps team (10+ engineers, growing) spanning DevOps, Quality Engineering, Database Engineering, Security Operations, Production Support, and Observability.
• Define team structures, RACI, roles, career ladders, and progression frameworks. Clarify interfaces between TechOps pillars, product squads, and the Architecture function.
• Own OKRs and delivery milestones for TechOps. Report progress, risks, and capacity constraints to programme leadership before they become blockers.
• Set the standard for how TechOps works: automate by default, measure what matters, fix what's broken.

Platform & delivery

• Own the engineering platforms that product squads depend on: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, quality gates, security scanning, observability, and database services.
• Deliver governed self-service so squads deploy independently within approved guardrails — without waiting on your teams for routine operations.
• Own the Green Lane and make releasing uneventful: deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR.
• Establish production support operations (L1/L2/L3), on-call processes, and incident management frameworks.
• Drive compliance readiness: audit evidence, security accreditation (CSA/CSG/IM8), and go-live gates for each programme wave.

Engineering standards & AI-assisted practices

• Set and enforce TNR-wide engineering standards across code quality, testing, review processes, and deployment safety.
• Drive AI-assisted engineering workflows: standardised tooling, commit attribution, AI-augmented code review, test generation, and quality evaluation.
• Hold all engineering output to the same quality bar whether it was written by a human or an AI agent.

[What we are looking for]

• At least 12 years of experience in technology, with 6+ years in engineering leadership managing platform, infrastructure, or operations teams at scale.
• Demonstrated experience building and leading a support organisation — not just overseeing one, but standing it up: hiring, defining tiers (L1/L2/L3), setting quality standards, managing escalations, and coaching engineers. You understand production support from the inside.
• Proven track record in FinOps and cloud cost optimisation at scale — driving organisational change to embed cost-efficiency into engineering culture, not just reporting on spend. Experience delivering material financial outcomes (not just dashboards).
• Experience with data platforms and cloud infrastructure — data lake architecture, large-scale cloud migrations, or database engineering. Hands-on enough to make sound technical tradeoffs on data strategy and cloud architecture decisions.
• Track record managing multiple engineering disciplines simultaneously (infrastructure + support + data, or similar). Single-function management experience is not sufficient.
• Experience executing large-scale cloud migrations — moving significant workloads to production cloud environments under time pressure, not just writing migration plans.
• Strong vendor and alliance management — experience as executive liaison with major cloud providers, technology vendors and system integrators, including partnership governance.
• Experience in compliance-heavy environments (government, financial services, critical infrastructure) where audit evidence, security accreditation, and change governance are non-negotiable.
• Comfortable working alongside teams that use AI development tools daily. You don't need to write prompts yourself, but you need to understand AI-assisted engineering well enough to set standards and judge output quality.

Good to have

• Experience with the Singapore government technology ecosystem (GovTech, SGTS, IM8/CSA frameworks).
• Background in trade, logistics, or regulatory platform engineering.
• Experience with AWS at enterprise scale.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows and agentic engineering practices.
• Experience with large-scale legacy modernisation programmes, and/or regulated cutove

What we offer you: 

GovTech is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive workplace that values diverse voices and perspectives, as we believe that diversity is the foundation to innovation.   

Our employee benefits are based on a total rewards approach, offering a holistic and market-competitive suite of perks. These include leave benefits to meet your work-life needs and employee wellness programs. 

We champion flexible work arrangements (subject to your job role) and trust that you will manage your own time to deliver your best, wherever you are, and whatever works best for you.  

Learn more about life inside GovTech at go.gov.sg/GovTechCareers. 
Stay connected with us on social media at go.gov.sg/ConnectWithGovTech

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