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.
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.