Execution Associate

NUSX; Singapore; On-site; SGD 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

NUSX, housed within the National University of Singapore, seeks an Execution Associate who will be thrown into important problems from day one and expected to figure out what needs to happen. You will work directly with senior team members and be deployed against whatever matters most at the time.

You will turn broad direction into concrete actions, outputs, and decisions while coordinating with researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, industry partners, and NUS teams.

Qualifications

• Trajectory over tenure is valued.
• Willingness to dive into difficult problems from day one.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of important problems and drive them toward resolution.
• Turn broad direction into concrete actions, outputs, and decisions.
• Figure things out when the answer, process, or owner is not obvious.
• Chase down information, people, decisions, and dependencies needed to keep work moving.
• Conduct rapid research and analysis across technologies, markets, companies, and emerging opportunities.

Job description

About Us

NUSX is where NUS talent, research, and ideas meet the people, pathways, and resources that can take them further. That includes founder development, research translation, venture creation, industry partnerships, and access to capital and global networks. Across NUSX, our programs and people bring different capabilities to a shared ambition: helping more NUS talent, research, and ideas create real-world impact at scale. The Idea to Impact (ITI) team sits at the heart of this mission. Across Logic, Matter, and Pulse, our core technology domains, we work hands-on to move early ideas toward validation, ventures, and real-world impact. This work is fast, non-linear, and deeply cross-functional - and it only works when execution keeps up with ambition.

The Role

The Execution Associate is an early-career role for exceptionally capable people who want an unusually steep learning curve and are prepared to work hard for it. You will work directly with senior members of the team and be deployed against whatever matters most at the time. One week that might mean helping assess a promising technology for a commercial decision. The next it might be untangling a stalled project, researching an unfamiliar market, pulling together the people needed to solve a problem, or turning a rough idea into a finished output. You will often start with an objective rather than a set of instructions. We expect you to work out what needs to happen, find the people and information you need, and keep going until the job is done. This is not a project management role, an administrative role, a graduate rotation, or a conventional first rung on a corporate career ladder. You will be thrown into difficult problems from day one and expected to figure out how to get them done. The role is deliberately broad and intense, and designed to be a launchpad rather than a long-term destination.

What You’ll Do

• Take ownership of important problems and drive them toward resolution.
• Turn broad direction into concrete actions, outputs, and decisions.
• Figure things out when the answer, process, or owner is not obvious.
• Chase down information, people, decisions, and dependencies needed to keep work moving.
• Conduct rapid research and analysis across technologies, markets, companies, and emerging opportunities.
• Prepare high-quality materials for meetings, decisions, partnerships, and external engagements.
• Work across researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, industry partners, IP specialists, and NUS teams.
• Step into gaps when something important needs doing and there is nobody obvious to do it.
• Do the unglamorous work as willingly as the interesting work.
• Learn extremely quickly.

Who We’re Looking For

• We care much more about trajectory than tenure.
• You may be coming straight from university, have spent a year or two in a startup, laboratory, consulting firm, investment team, or other demanding environment, or simply have done unusually ambitious things for your stage of life.
• Extremely high-energy and highly self-directed.
• Intellectually curious and quick to learn.
• Resourceful - when you do not know how to do something, your instinct is to work it out.
• Comfortable being given responsibility before you feel completely ready for it.
• Able to move quickly without becoming careless.
• A strong thinker, writer, and communicator.
• Interested in science, technology, startups, and how ideas become things that matter in the real world.
• Low-ego and willing to do whatever the work requires.
• Persistent.
• You notice when something has stalled, and you do something about it.
• Someone who finishes things.
• You do not need a PhD, MBA, or years of professional experience.
• We are looking for evidence that you are unusually capable, curious, and hungry.

Where This Can Take You

This role is designed to be a launchpad. After about two years, we would expect successful Execution Associates to be ready for a different kind of challenge - whether that is graduate or professional school, joining or founding a startup, venture capital, technology, or another demanding operating role. The aim is to give exceptional people unusual exposure, responsibility, and operating experience early in their careers. Success is leaving this role with the judgment, confidence, and track record to take on whatever comes next.

Why Join NUSX

This is a rare chance to shape the future of innovation in Asia - from Singapore, with global reach. You'll sit at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and capital, with the freedom to take big swings and the platform to land them.