Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Platform Engineering

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.

[What you will be working on]

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

Dsignated 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.

In the role of Senior/Staff Software Engineer within Platform Engineering, you will direct the technical evolution of the underlying platform that underpins all TradeNet product development, placing a strong emphasis on resilience, security compliance, observability, and developer efficiency at scale.

Operating horizontally across product squads, Platform Engineering delivers core infrastructure, standardized tooling, reliable runtime environments, automated deployment guardrails, and deep operational visibility. This framework empowers product teams to deliver software safely, efficiently, and autonomously without facing routine operational friction.

You will collaborate closely with software engineering squads, security, and architecture teams to establish scalable platform practices, automate infrastructure delivery, enhance production resilience, and ensure high system availability.

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'll do

Platform Architecture & Resilience

• Architect Multi-Cluster Foundations: Design and evolve a resilient, hub-and-spoke multi-cluster Kubernetes infrastructure on AWS, optimizing for zero downtime, multi-region failover, cost efficiency, and performance.
• Advance Zero-Trust Infrastructure: Drive the implementation of Istio Ambient mesh, mTLS, and fine-grained authorization policies across complex network topologies.
• Observability & Reliability: Establish comprehensive observability, logging, metrics, and alerting to proactively identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, participating in incident response and blameless post-mortems to strengthen MTTR.

Platform Engineering & Developer Experience 

• Build Golden Paths: Enable product teams by transforming tenant onboarding and infrastructure management into self-service workflows backed by modular, reusable Terraform/OpenTofu code and clear reference architectures.
• GitOps at Scale: Standardize declarative continuous delivery using ArgoCD/ Rollouts (ApplicationSets, multi-cluster synchronization) and modern CI/CD pipelines.
• Governed self-service: Squads deploy independently within approved guardrails, owning the release metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR).

Security, Compliance & Governance 

• Fortify Security Posture: Lead platform security assessments and penetration test remediations; integrate SIEM logging, privileged access management (PAM), and tight egress controls.
• Drive Technical Governance: Author Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and technical RFCs, leading cross-functional architecture reviews to set technical standards across TradeNet while ensuring compliance readiness (audit evidence, CSA/CSG/IM8 accreditation).

Technical Leadership & Mentorship 

• Build Engineering Capability: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers across teams, elevating technical craft, fostering shared ownership of critical systems, and cultivating a strong engineering culture.
• Set and enforce TradeNet-wide engineering standards across code quality, AI-assisted development workflows, and testing.

[What we are looking for]

• Scale & Expertise: At least 8+ years (Senior) or 12+ years (Staff) of software/platform engineering experience, with 3+ years architecting and operating mission-critical production Kubernetes platforms on AWS used by multiple engineering teams.
• Service Mesh: Proven production experience with Istio (Ambient or sidecar topologies)
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Expert proficiency in Terraform, with a track record of building reusable, well-documented module libraries adopted across organizations.
• Cloud & Networking Depth: Deep expertise in AWS enterprise environments (multi-account landing zones, VPC design, Transit Gateway, egress filtering, container orchestration, and managed relational databases like PostgreSQL/Aurora).
• Modern Operations & Security: Practical experience with GitOps (ArgoCD), security remediation, SIEM integration, and architectural compliance in high-security/compliance-heavy environments.
• Cross-Team Alignment & Leadership: Proven ability to establish technical standards, author clear documentation/runbooks, and build consensus across teams via RFCs and architecture forums.

Good to have 

• Experience with enterprise secrets management platforms (HashiCorp Vault).
• Experience with the Singapore government technology ecosystem (GovTech, SGTS, IM8/CSA frameworks) and regulatory/trade/logistics platform engineering.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development workflows and agentic engineering practices.
• Experience with large-scale legacy modernisation programmes, regulated cutover, or active open-source infrastructure contributions.

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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