SVP – Engineering — Multi-Function Shared-Services Network

The mandate

Engineering teams supporting shared services across six APAC locations have built workflow, integration, automation and data components independently. Singapore will become the regional engineering anchor, with selected capability and ownership moving into a common organisation. Local teams possess critical process and regulatory knowledge, while the emerging centre offers stronger platform and reliability depth. Consolidation must combine those strengths rather than replace distributed expertise with remote tickets.

The SVP – Engineering will lead approximately 675 employees and material partners and steward a technology perimeter near S$510 million. The remit includes service engineering, integration, automation, data exchange, developer platforms, reliability and technical careers. Product and process owners set business outcomes; enterprise IT owns group infrastructure. This executive owns the engineering quality, reuse and operability of solutions built specifically for shared services.

The estate includes duplicated components, locally coded automations and brittle interfaces whose business importance exceeds their documentation. Some should move, some become regional products and others remain locally supported under common engineering standards. The SVP must base each decision on ownership, latency, control, capability and lifecycle cost, not the prestige of the destination location.

Time-zone design matters as much as reporting lines. A Singapore anchor cannot sensibly own every production event during the region’s night, and local engineers should not be reduced to escalation relays. The SVP will create follow-the-sun support with authority, observability and safe change rights in each relevant zone. Measures should reveal hand-off delay and repeated diagnosis. Critical services need tested command when Singapore is unavailable, including clear criteria for when a local engineer may contain or reverse a regional release.

Engineering documentation must serve operations, not an audit archive. Transfer acceptance will include reproducible builds, decision history, dependency ownership and a new engineer’s ability to diagnose a realistic failure. Where those tests fail, the originating team remains jointly accountable and the consolidation schedule must reflect the additional work.

Why this seat is open

The incumbent will retire after a planned transition but has requested that the successor be identified before the largest ownership moves begin. This is a planned replacement with four to six months for assessment and handover. The board values the outgoing leader’s contribution and seeks continuity of technical relationships without preserving every historic architecture choice.

What you will own

• Inventory regional engineering assets, dependencies, owners, source, support and recovery before transfer decisions.
• Define common architecture, engineering, release and reliability standards proportionate to service criticality.
• Decide which components migrate to Singapore, become shared products, remain local or retire.
• Preserve regulatory and process knowledge through joint ownership, rotations and documented acceptance.
• Build reusable integration and automation platforms and require adoption evidence before further investment.
• Establish error budgets, incident learning and technical-debt choices for critical service technology.
• Create principal-engineer and technical-manager careers across the regional organisation.
• Govern engineering vendors, cloud and tooling against lifecycle value and supportability.

The first 12 months

The first quarter will produce a verified asset and dependency map and interim ownership for every critical component. The SVP will select two contrasting transfers and agree acceptance with local process and control leaders. Unsupported code and credentials presenting immediate exposure will receive containment.

By month eight, the pilot components should operate under common release and reliability practices, with local knowledge transfer tested through incidents and change. One duplicated platform should be retired and a regional engineering council should make architecture exceptions with funded expiry plans.

At year-end, 70% of critical service technology should meet approved engineering and recovery standards, severe change-related incidents should fall by 30% and duplicated tool spend by 12%. Reusable platform adoption should increase across at least four locations, while no material control failure arises from remote ownership or lost local knowledge.

What the board will measure

• Safe ownership transfer and sustained service outcomes after originating teams step back.
• Actual reuse and retirement rather than additional regional layers.
• Reliability, supportability and technical-debt transparency.
• Retention of 90% of pivotal engineers and successor depth in principal roles.
• Technology cost connected to business service and lifecycle value.

The person

You are an engineering SVP, platform leader or technology-services executive who has consolidated distributed teams and live components across countries. You value local operating knowledge and know how to test whether ownership has truly transferred. Experience with integration-heavy enterprise environments and high-volume business services is particularly relevant.

You bring 22–28 years of experience and have controlled at least S$290 million while leading 475 engineers and partners or more. The committee will examine a component you left under local ownership, a platform you retired and an incident that changed engineering standards across locations.

The position is onsite in Singapore and requires substantial APAC travel.

Compensation and terms

The base range is S$360,000–480,000 with annual incentive. Measures will include safe transfer, reliability, reuse, retirement, economics and technical succession. Moved headcount alone is not an achievement. Final terms reflect current mix and the agreed regional perimeter; the planned succession can accommodate up to six months’ notice.

Confidentiality

The six locations, service components, architecture and parent organisation remain private during consolidation. Qualified candidates receive additional material after reciprocal interest and confidentiality. Published Singapore and workforce facts are intentionally broad and should not be used for identification.