SVP – Engineering — Data-Products Franchise

The mandate

A privately held data-products franchise has committed more roadmap work than its engineering capacity and architecture can support. Product lines are being consolidated, yet overlapping services, customer variants and technical dependencies continue to absorb teams. The board has approved a new SVP – Engineering role to establish a coherent delivery and leadership system before the next capital and talent cycle.

The executive will oversee engineering connected to approximately S$1,950 million in annual recurring revenue and lead about 650 employees and material partners. Responsibility includes software and data engineering, architecture, quality, reliability, developer productivity, technical programme management, partners, engineering economics and leadership. The SVP reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive committee sponsor.

The starting point is a credible demand-and-capacity view. Customer commitments, regulatory work, reliability, migration, architecture and product value should be expressed in comparable units with dependencies. Capacity must reflect skill, team topology, operational load and uncertainty, not an aggregate headcount multiplied by assumed utilisation.

The SVP will reset roadmap commitments with product and commercial leaders. Every material item needs customer consequence, technical path, confidence and an explicit trade-off. Dates should be ranges linked to evidence until uncertainty reduces. Work accepted through executive escalation must displace something visible rather than accumulate outside the plan.

Product-line consolidation provides an architecture choice. Shared ingestion, storage, modelling, entitlement, APIs and observability may reduce duplication, but centralising capability without proven product demand can create a platform queue. The leader will decide what belongs in common architecture, what remains product specific and how funding and service accountability work.

Quality and reliability are delivery capacity. Defects, incidents, rework, manual operations and fragile tests consume people even when plans label them separately. The SVP will establish service objectives and protected remediation, connecting technical health to customer and economic consequence. A release is not complete if it transfers hidden work to operations or customers.

Engineering flow should become measurable from decision to safe adoption. Lead time, completion, change failure, queueing, toil and usage matter more than output volume. The leader will simplify approval and team interfaces where they add delay, while preserving independent controls for security, privacy and data correctness.

The consolidation also requires migration discipline. Data lineage, compatibility, permissions, validation, customer communication and rollback must be planned for each product transition. Legacy components can be retired only when usage and operational dependencies have ended. Parallel running should have a priced duration rather than become the permanent cost of avoiding a decision.

Technical leadership needs authority and depth. Principal engineers, engineering managers and architects require clear domains and escalation rights. The SVP will assess whether current leaders can make enterprise trade-offs, fill gaps and build succession. Important architecture knowledge should be documented and exercised beyond its original authors.

Supplier and cloud economics will enter engineering decisions. Build-versus-buy, data licences, infrastructure consumption and specialist partners must reflect portability, support and exit cost. Finance should be able to trace released benefit to changed consumption, contracts or capacity, not a target diagram.

Why this seat is open

This newly created role forms part of the next operating model and does not replace an incumbent. A planned four-to-six-month search allows the appointee to arrive before capital and workforce choices are fixed. Existing leaders retain their accountabilities until the remit is formally activated.

What you will own

• Establish a realistic engineering demand, capacity and dependency baseline.
• Direct engineering supporting approximately S$1,950 million of annual recurring revenue.
• Reset roadmap commitments through explicit customer and technical trade-offs.
• Choose shared and product-specific architecture for the consolidated franchise.
• Improve quality, reliability and flow while reducing recurring toil.
• Lead approximately 650 employees and partners across engineering.
• Govern product migration through data, compatibility and rollback evidence.
• Strengthen technical leadership, succession and engineering economics.

The first 12 months

During the first 90 days, reconstruct roadmap and capacity facts, meet the 30 stakeholders most consequential to commitments and assess technical leaders. Stabilise severe delivery or reliability risk. Agree architecture, migration and prioritisation gates with the board before adding material work.

Months four to nine should activate the revised roadmap, fund shared capabilities selectively and remove priority duplication. Improve test and delivery flow, begin controlled migrations and address critical leadership gaps. Early proof may include shorter lead time, fewer failures, retired work or released cloud and partner cost.

By year end, roadmap predictability, quality and technical leadership should reinforce one another. Delivery needs to remain within 10% of the approved case, supported by three forecasts reconciling product commitments, capacity, cloud cash, customers and talent. Any severe engineering exception should have verified closure before crossing 30 days.

What the board will measure

• Roadmap promises matched to skilled capacity and explicit dependencies.
• Completion, lead time, change failure, reliability and adoption trends.
• Architecture duplication removed without creating a central delivery bottleneck.
• Migrations completed with data integrity and proven rollback readiness.
• Retention above 90% for crucial technical talent and ready cover for 70% of direct roles.
• Cloud, supplier and engineering benefits visible in actual consumption or capacity.

The person

You are an SVP Engineering, VP R&D or Engineering Centre Head with 22–28 years in software, cloud, data platforms, IT services or technology-enabled business services. You have owned a material platform or value stream, including its budget, people and operating outcomes.

Your accountable P&L, book, budget or portfolio has been at least S$1,150 million, and you have led 650 or more people. Evidence should show a hard roadmap or architecture choice and results sustained through two reporting periods.

You can mediate between product ambition, commercial urgency and technical integrity without diluting accountability. The board needs a leader who understands data architecture, delivery systems and engineering economics, and who can retain expert followership while stopping commitments.

Compensation and terms

The base salary is S$360,000–480,000 plus annual incentive. This permanent Singapore position is onsite, supports international relocation and is not configured for remote work. A notice period as long as six months can be managed.

Confidentiality

The organisation, architecture, roadmap commitments and current leaders are confidential. Identifying material will be shared only after mutual fit is established under an undertaking; scale and circumstances are blended.