Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Platform Engineering, Singpass
GovTech Singapore
Salary undisclosed
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Description
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]
As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer in Platform Engineering, you will be the principal architect for our multi-cluster container infrastructure. You will shape the technical direction of the core foundations that every Singpass product team builds upon—focusing on resiliency, security compliance, observability, and developer velocity at a national scale.
Key Responsibilities
Platform Architecture & Resilience
- Architect Multi-Cluster Foundations: Design and evolve a resilient, hub-and-spoke multi-cluster OpenShift / 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, SPIFFE/SPIRE workload identity federation, mTLS, and fine-grained authorization policies across complex network topologies.
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 (ApplicationSets, multi-cluster synchronization) and modern CI/CD pipelines.
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 Singpass.
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.
[What We Are Looking For]
Technical Capabilities
- Scale & Expertise: 6+ years in software/platform engineering, with 3+ years architecting and operating mission-critical production Kubernetes/OpenShift (OCP 4.x) platforms used by multiple engineering teams.
- Service Mesh & Identity: Proven production experience with Istio (Ambient or sidecar topologies) and workload identity systems (SPIFFE/SPIRE or equivalent trust domain federation).
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Expert proficiency in Terraform or OpenTofu, 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, PrivateLink, egress filtering, and managed databases).
- Modern Operations & Security: Practical experience with GitOps (ArgoCD), security remediation, SIEM integration, and architectural compliance in high-security environments.
Leadership & Influence
- Cross-Team Alignment: Proven ability to establish technical standards and build consensus across disparate teams via RFCs, architecture forums, and clear trade-off analysis.
- Documentation First: A natural habit of producing clear, accessible runbooks, system designs, and developer guides that scale institutional knowledge.
- Active Mentorship: Demonstrated commitment to growing engineers outside your direct team structure, helping them achieve measurable career progression.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with enterprise secrets management platforms (OpenBao or HashiCorp Vault).
- Exposure to distributed SQL databases (YugabyteDB, CockroachDB, or Google Cloud Spanner).
- Prior experience operating in high-availability, highly regulated environments (government, defense, or fintech).
- Hands-on experience with Reliability Engineering (SLO/SLI design, incident management leadership).
- Familiarity with guardrails and tooling for AI-assisted software development.
- Active contributions to CNCF or open-source infrastructure projects.
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
Benefits
- professional development
About this role
Platform engineering at national scale demands architects who can balance competing demands: resilience and performance, security and developer velocity, compliance and innovation. At GovTech, you'd own the multi-cluster Kubernetes infrastructure that underpins Singpass—a mission-critical system serving Singapore's citizens. This role asks you to design and evolve that foundation across multiple regions and availability zones, implement zero-trust networking with service mesh and workload identity, and establish the golden paths that let product teams move fast without sacrificing safety or observability.
You'll need deep production experience running Kubernetes or OpenShift at scale, hands-on mastery of Terraform and GitOps tooling, and genuine expertise in AWS enterprise networking and security. Beyond the technical depth, this is a leadership position: you'll mentor engineers across teams, author architecture decisions that shape how Singpass evolves, and build the institutional knowledge and standards that let a distributed organization move coherently. Success here means turning complex infrastructure concerns into self-service workflows and clear reference architectures that your peers actually want to use.
The role is in-office in Singapore and requires you to thrive in a highly regulated, high-availability environment where your decisions affect millions of users. If you've spent years operating critical systems in government, fintech, or defense—and you care as much about how your team grows as you do about the systems you build—this is a rare opportunity to shape public digital infrastructure at a national level.
Pay for this role
The employer didn't post a pay range for this role. That usually means pay is set in negotiation, which favors whoever arrives with numbers. Check ranges on comparable Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Platform Engineering, Singpass postings in your area, and analyze any offer before you accept it.
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