Senior Software Engineer (Singpass) #GovTechForPublicGood

What the role is

The Government Technology Agency (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. We empower our people to master their craft through continuous and robust learning and development opportunities all year round. Our GovTechies embody our Agile, Bold and Collaborative values to deliver impactful solutions.

GovTech aims to transform the delivery of Government digital services by taking an "outside-in" view, putting citizens and businesses at the heart of everything we do.

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.

Who We Are:

The Singpass team builds Singapore’s digital identity system. This includes various personal authentication protocols, data sharing tools, and corporate identity systems through Corppass. The team’s mission is to provide reliable digital identity infrastructure that streamlines transactions, enables businesses, and protects against fraud. As a software engineer, you will:

• Build prototypes to demonstrate technological opportunities
• Design system architectures
• Write production quality code
• Manage deployments to cloud infrastructure
• Maintain systems to a high level of reliability

Because our team focuses on pushing new initiatives, you will also have to:

• Identify potential projects that improve the public good
• Design novel systems that work around bureaucratic constraints
• Advocate and explain these technical ideas to other government agencies

We are also looking for experienced software engineers! In addition to the above, more experienced software engineers will be expected to:

• Establish best practices for developer operations
• Provide technical leadership across multiple product teams
• Share your expertise and mentor other engineers
• Help with recruiting

You're not just here to write code, but also to figure out what we should be building and how we should build it. You will work on meaningful projects that solve problems pertinent to our society. The public sector is full of opportunities where even the simplest software can have a big impact on people’s lives. Rather than work on commercial ventures commonly found in the startup scene, we're here to improve how we live as a society through what we can offer as a government.

Your job will be to bring expertise and capability to the public sector. Sometimes this means coding new systems from scratch. Other times this means using the best solutions the development community has to offer. We use cloud services, open source software, and commodity hardware as far as possible. These often include, but are not limited to: GitHub, AWS, React Native, MongoDB, and Stripe amongst others. Knowing what to build and what to reuse lets us avoid wasting time on solved problems and focus on delivering actual value.

What it is like working here:

• Rapid Prototyping - Instead of spending too much time debating ideas we prefer testing them. This identifies potential problems quickly, and more importantly, conveys what is possible to others easily.
• Ownership - In addition to technical responsibilities, this means having opinions on what is being done and having ideas on what should be done next. Building something that you believe in is the best way to build something good.
• Continuous Learning - Working on new ideas often means not fully understanding what you are working on. Taking time to learn new architectures, frameworks, technologies, and even languages is not just encouraged but essential.

Who we are looking for:

We work mostly in Typescript. However, we don’t require experience in any specific programming language or technology. Core competency in at least one language and the ability to learn is what matters to us. We look for people who:

Have a demonstrated ability to build software - Prior work and personal projects count for much more than specific degrees.

Write code to solve abstract programming problems - Clear thinking, the ability to debug, and understanding the limits of an approach matter much more than getting the “correct” answer.

Talk and reason about code with other engineers - We work as a team so you need to be able to not just solve problems, but have other people understand your solutions.

Take initiative to make things happen - Our job is to push for change in government, so we need to challenge the status quo and not wait for instruction.

Want to work for the public good - We are public servants, we serve the public. This sometimes means ignoring political pressures and misguided policies. We need people who will push back if something is not in the public interest.

Overall we look for people who have ability, initiative, good communication, and strong values.

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 programmes.