Chief Architect - TradeNet

GovTech; Singapore; On-site; SGD 260,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

GovTech in Singapore seeks a senior technical leader to set the architecture for the TradeNet platform, orchestrating service decomposition, data architecture, API contracts and infrastructure patterns. You will own decisions across teams, drive resilience, and guide AI-assisted engineering initiatives.

You will lead the modernisation of legacy monoliths, reconstruct undocumented logic, and navigate data governance constraints, while mentoring engineers and aligning stakeholders at the program

Qualifications

• Hands-on software engineering with deep systems knowledge.
• Ability to lead across multiple teams (5+ teams, 40+ engineers).
• Strong cloud-native architecture experience (AWS ideal).
• Experience with legacy modernisation and decomposing monoliths.
• Proficiency in Kotlin/Java/JVM, PostgreSQL, and cloud tooling.
• Ability to make hard technical calls under ambiguity.

Responsibilities

• Set the overall system architecture for large-scale platforms.
• Own architecture decisions and resolve cross-squad disputes.
• Lead AI/LLM-assisted engineering initiatives.
• Review designs and contribute RFCs, tech docs and proofs.
• Drive resilience, contracts, and governance across services.

Job description

What you\'ll do

• Architecture & technical direction
  

  Set the overall system architecture for the TradeNet platform - service decomposition, data architecture, API contracts, infrastructure patterns.

  
  

  Make binding technical decisions across teams. Resolve cross-squad technical disputes. Own the architecture decision record.

  
  

  Design for resilience: fault isolation, blast-radius containment, defensive API contracts, and graceful degradation across a system that cannot go down.

  
  

  Define the architectural guardrails, contracts, and patterns that teams build on - enabling independent delivery without architectural drift.

  
  


• Legacy modernisation
  

  Lead the technical strategy for decomposing and replacing the legacy monolith, including where to strangle, where to rewrite, and where to leave alone.

  
  

  Reconstruct undocumented business logic from incomplete legacy codebases - using source analysis, documentation archaeology, dependency tracing, and AI-assisted reverse-engineering.

  
  

  Navigate compliance and data-governance constraints that shape what can be migrated, how, and when.

  
  


• Hands-on technical work
  

  Write architecture documents, design specs, and technical RFCs that teams implement against.

  
  

  Review code and designs across squads - particularly at integration boundaries and in foundational components.

  
  

  Prototype and prove out critical technical approaches before committing teams to them.

  
  

  Lead root-cause analysis on hard production and programme-level technical problems.

  
  


• AI-assisted engineering
  

  Pioneer and refine AI/LLM-assisted approaches to legacy analysis, code generation, test creation, and documentation.

  
  

  Set the technical standards for how AI-generated output is evaluated, attributed, and held to quality.

  
  

  Push the programme's use of agentic AI beyond basic code completion into architectural and analytical workflows.

  
  


• Technical leadership
  

  Earn trust with engineering teams through technical credibility - you lead by being right and being helpful, not by title. Your authority comes from the quality of your decisions and your willingness to get into the details.

  
  

  Resolve technical disputes across squads. People will disagree on approach, and you are the one who makes the call and gets buy-in from both sides.

  
  

  Balance technical debt against migration timelines. Know when to take a shortcut to hit a delivery date and when to say no because the long-term cost is too high. Make these tradeoffs explicitly and visibly.

  
  

  Grow technical leads across squads. Mentor senior engineers. Raise the bar on technical decision-making across the programme.

  
  

  Provide technical input to programme-level decisions: sequencing, risk, feasibility, and pivot recommendations.

  
  

  Secure executive alignment on technical direction, particularly under ambiguity or when course corrections are needed.

  
  

What we are looking for

• At least 12 years of hands-on software engineering, with significant time spent as a principal/staff engineer or architect on large-scale systems (not purely management track).


• Experience as the overall technical lead across multiple teams (5+ teams, 40+ engineers) - setting architecture that others build on, without directly managing them.


• Deep experience with legacy modernisation: decomposing monoliths, migrating off on-prem platforms, reconstructing business logic from incomplete or undocumented systems. You've done this before and know where it goes wrong.


• Strong cloud-native architecture background - service design, event-driven systems, API-first platforms, infrastructure-as-code. Ideally on AWS.


• Demonstrated ability to make hard technical calls under ambiguity - pivoting programmes, resolving cross-team disputes, and getting executive buy-in for technical direction when the path isn't clear.


• Experience designing defensive/resilient architectures for systems that cannot afford downtime - fault isolation, contract enforcement, blast-radius containment.


• Hands-on proficiency in a modern backend stack. The programme uses Kotlin, but deep experience in Java/JVM ecosystems, PostgreSQL, and cloud-native tooling is the important part.


• Experience with AI/LLM-assisted engineering beyond basic code completion - reverse-engineering pipelines, agentic workflows, or AI-augmented analysis at the architectural level.


• Strong written technical communication. Your architecture documents and RFCs need to stand on their own and be implementable by teams without further explanation.

Good to have

• Experience in Singapore government technology ecosystem (GovTech, SGTS, IM8/CSA frameworks).


• Background in trade, customs, regulatory, or financial platform engineering.


• Prior engineering management experience (team lead, EM) - useful for mentoring and influence, though this is an IC role.


• Experience with data-governance and compliance constraints that shape architecture (data residency, classification, audit trails).


• Familiarity with the Java/J2EE legacy ecosystem you'd be migrating away from.