Lead Software Engineer / Software Engineering Manager

HDB Housing & Development Board; Singapore; On-site; SGD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Housing and Development Board (HDB) Singapore is seeking an experienced Software Engineering Manager to lead a cross-functional team delivering high-impact digital products. You will oversee end-to-end lifecycle from design to live operations, shaping architecture, CI/CD, and reliability practices across frontend and backend systems.

You will partner with Technical Lead, Product Owner and Product Manager to hire, mentor, and grow engineers while driving secure, scalable, and maintainable

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building scalable, enterprise-grade products on commercial cloud.
• At least 3 years leading or managing engineering teams.
• Strong hands-on background in frontend and backend web app development.
• Experience with cloud-native and serverless architectures on AWS, GCP or Azure.
• Familiar with microservices, containers, and IaC practices.
• DevSecOps, CI/CD pipelines, SAST/DAST and Secure-by-Design.
• Experience with Test-Driven Development and automated testing.
• Experience in live production operations, incident response and reliability improvements.

Responsibilities

• People leadership: coach and mentor engineers; set expectations and support career growth.
• Team building: drive hiring and onboarding; grow team capabilities.
• Delivery: plan, prioritise, manage dependencies and risks; ensure high-quality delivery.
• Technical direction: collaborate on architecture and design; balance feature delivery with debt.
• Operational excellence: ensure reliability, security and performance of live products.
• Engineering practices: champion DevSecOps and Agile practices; improve team processes.
• Stakeholder collaboration: align with product, business and partner teams; communicate progress.

Job description

What the role is

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) is at the forefront of Singapore's public service transformation, delivering digital services that meaningfully impact the lives of citizens. Within HDB, our Information Services Group drives this mission by building and operating customised IT solutions that give HDB the flexibility and efficiency to serve Singaporeans well. Our team is growing with purpose. We're expanding our engineering capabilities to deliver HDB's most strategically significant digital products, ones that support citizens at every stage of their housing journey. We're a full-spectrum engineering team spanning Frontend, Backend, DevOps, System Architecture, Quality, Resilience Engineering, and Tech Operations. What sets us apart is our commitment to growing people, not just products. We invest deliberate time in grooming engineers across multiple disciplines and developing the leaders within our team. If you're passionate about engineering and want to grow, technically and as a leader, we'd love to have you on board.

What you will be working on

You will lead a cross-functional engineering team that owns the end-to-end delivery of high-impact digital products, from solution design through to live operations. We operate on a you-build-it, you-run-it model, and as Software Engineering Manager you will be accountable for both the people and the outcomes: building a high-performing, healthy team that delivers reliably and continues to grow. Working in close partnership with the Technical Lead, Product Owner and Product Manager, you will shape how the team plans, builds, ships and operates software across the full lifecycle, including cloud-native architecture, CI/CD pipelines, frontend and backend development, resilience engineering, and test automation. You will also lead the team in exploring and adopting emerging technologies, including GenAI-assisted development workflows, as we continuously evolve how we build and operate software.

Your key responsibilities include:

• People leadership: Lead, coach and mentor engineers across disciplines; set clear expectations, provide regular feedback, and support career growth and performance development
• Team building: Drive hiring and onboarding of engineers, including technical assessments and interviews, and grow the team's capabilities in line with product and organisational needs
• Delivery: Own the team's delivery commitments: planning, prioritisation, managing dependencies and risks, and ensuring predictable, high-quality iterative delivery
• Technical direction: Partner with the Technical Lead on architecture and design decisions, balancing feature delivery with technical debt, scalability, security and maintainability
• Operational excellence: Ensure the reliability, security and performance of live products, including incident management, post-incident reviews, and continuous improvement of resilience and observability
• Engineering practices: Champion DevSecOps, Secure-by-Design, test automation and Agile practices, and drive improvements to team processes and developer productivity
• Stakeholder collaboration: Work with product, business and partner teams to align on priorities, communicate progress and trade-offs clearly, and represent the team's work to management

What we are looking for

Have 8+ years of software engineering experience building scalable, enterprise-grade products on commercial cloud, including at least 3 years leading or managing engineering teams, with demonstrated ability across the following:

• Proven track record of leading engineering teams to deliver and operate production systems, with experience in hiring, coaching and developing engineers
• Experienced in Agile delivery management, including planning, prioritisation, managing risks and dependencies, and working closely with Product Owners and Product Managers
• Strong hands‑on background in modern frontend and backend web application development, with experience in frameworks such as React, FastAPI, Express.js, Spring, or Django, and able to engage credibly in code and design reviews
• Experienced in cloud‑native and serverless engineering on commercial cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure
• Sound understanding of loosely coupled, microservices and event‑driven architectures, with the ability to guide teams in building systems that are scalable, fault‑tolerant, and resilient
• Familiar with relational and non‑relational data stores, containerisation, and infrastructure‑as‑code practices, using tools such as PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, Docker, Amazon ECS, and Terraform
• Experienced in establishing DevSecOps practices and CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Git, GitLab, and GitHub, and in embedding Secure‑by‑Design principles, including Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
• Champions engineering quality through Test‑Driven Development and automated testing across the stack
• Experienced in managing live production operations, including incident response, application and database performance optimisation, and reliability improvement

Beyond technical and delivery skills, we are looking for a people‑first leader who builds trust, fosters a team‑first culture, and creates an environment where engineers can do their best work and grow. You communicate clearly with engineers, stakeholders and management alike, make sound decisions amid ambiguity, and balance competing priorities with good judgement. We value managers who lead by example, take ownership of outcomes, and bring a growth mindset: curious, open to feedback, and committed to continuously improving both the team and how it works.