Manager, Innovation

Changi Airports International Pte Ltd; Singapore; On-site; SGD 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

Changi Airports International Pte Ltd is seeking a strategic innovation partner to guide innovation trials, manage the budget, and surface key strategic issues to Senior Management. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience in innovation management within large organizations, preferably in aviation or technology.

The role involves navigating stakeholder relationships, connecting technology trends to business strategies, and ensuring impactful innovation outcomes for the organization.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of relevant experience in innovation management or related fields.
• Experience in large, matrix organizations preferred.
• Prior exposure to senior stakeholder management.

Responsibilities

• Partner with innovators to scope innovation trials.
• Steward the enterprise innovation budget.
• Surface strategic dilemmas and provide recommendations.
• Scan for emerging technologies and identify opportunities.
• Work with product owners to commercialise innovation.
• Connect technology and market trends with organizational priorities.

Skills

Innovation management

Stakeholder management

Strategic thinking

Financial modelling

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with innovators across Clusters and Business Units to rigorously scope innovation trials, sharpening problem statements, defining target outcomes, and structuring pilots that are lean and impactful to CAG’s strategic priorities.
• Steward the enterprise innovation budget, from annual planning and fund allocation.
• Surface innovation strategic dilemmas to Senior Management and bring well‑reasoned recommendations or portfolio trade-offs.
• Continuously scan the local and global landscape for emerging technologies, industry disruptions, and competitor moves, identify opportunities to strengthen CAG’s innovation pipeline and long‑term competitive positioning.
• Act as a strategic thought partner and sounding board to CAG’s innovators, workshopping future‑state concepts of operations, uncover opportunities to innovate, and shape technology roadmaps that are grounded in both strategic intent and operational reality.
• Build common innovation language (framework and experiment evaluation criteria) across the organisation.
• Work with product owners to commercialise innovation intellectual property.
• Strategic and structured thinking: Connect technology and market trends with organisational priorities into a coherent innovation agenda.
• High comfort with ambiguity: Moves forward without a perfectly defined brief, balances multiple competing priorities, and stays focused when the path is unclear.
• Stakeholder management: Navigates diverse stakeholder relationships, knows when to advise, when to push back, and when to defer.
• Strong communication: Distil complex, ambiguous situations and structure into crisp impactful narratives that aims senior management decision‑making.
• Technology fluency: Conversant in a broad range of technologies, able to evaluate what is worth trialling and discern genuine opportunity from hype.
• Business acumen: Perform financial modelling for project appraisal and develop termsheet for commercialisation partnerships.

Preferred Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, preferably with at least 5 years of relevant experience spanning innovation management, corporate strategy, management or technology advisory, or a related field.
• Experience in large, matrix organisations (aviation, infrastructure, real estate, hospitality, or technology sectors preferred), and some prior experience in project appraisal/ financial performance evaluation is advantageous.
• Prior exposure to senior stakeholder management, including preparing and presenting to C‑suite or equivalent leadership.