Data Scientist / Senior Data Scientist, Singpass

About GovTech and Singpass

GovTech is Singapore’s lead public sector technology agency, driving Smart Nation efforts and digital transformation across government. As the Centre of Excellence for Infocomm Technology and Smart Systems (ICT & SS), it develops capabilities across data science and AI, software development, smart city technology, digital infrastructure, and cybersecurity.

The organisation offers a purpose-driven career with continuous learning and development opportunities throughout the year. The opportunity sits within the Singpass team, which powers Singapore’s digital identity ecosystem, including authentication, data sharing, and corporate identity services through Corppass. The team’s goal is to deliver dependable digital identity infrastructure that makes transactions smoother, supports businesses, and helps prevent fraud.

Role overview

You will join Singpass’ Anti-Fraud team, whose focus is to protect Singpass accounts from compromise and misuse for fraudulent or criminal activity. The work has two main goals: reducing account takeovers at the time of live login, and limiting harm on already-compromised accounts through proactive monitoring. In practice, this role involves designing advanced machine learning solutions, including model training and feature engineering, to identify fraudulent behaviour.

The team is built around full-stack data science, so you are expected to work end-to-end rather than only producing code. You will help decide what to test, what to build next, and how to keep improving fraud detection in meaningful ways. The role is about creating real-world public impact through technology.

What you will do

• Use statistics to guide experimentation, analysis, and evaluation.
• Work with large, complex datasets and perform in-depth data analysis.
• Iterate quickly across approaches to improve fraud detection performance.
• Develop and maintain production systems that handle data and support ML inference.
• Design MLOps setups and deploy dependable, scalable machine learning solutions on cloud infrastructure.
• Create data engineering pipelines that enable new signals and feature development.
• Contribute ideas on what to test, what to improve, and how to strengthen the fraud-fighting strategy.

What the team looks for

• Strong decision-making skills, including the ability to assess goals, trade-offs, risks, and impact clearly.
• Ownership and initiative, with the confidence to form opinions and propose the next step.
• A collaborative, cross-functional mindset and comfort working across product and engineering boundaries.
• Curiosity and a commitment to continuous learning across architectures, frameworks, tools, and languages.
• Ability to discuss code and technical ideas clearly with data scientists and engineers.
• A product-focused approach that keeps user impact front and centre.
• Willingness to challenge the status quo and act in the public interest.
• Prior exposure to authentication or anti-fraud work is an advantage.

Technical environment

The team primarily works in Python, with a strong need for PySpark for big data analytics and data science. Infrastructure as code is written in TypeScript, and much of the engineering stack uses Java and Go, which may be needed occasionally for end-to-end deployments. The key capability the team values most is practical strength in data analytics, data engineering, and data science methods.

Candidate profile

Applicants should be able to demonstrate a strong track record of rapid experimentation and end-to-end ML delivery. Previous work and personal projects are considered more important than a specific degree. The ideal candidate is someone who keeps learning, stays current with modern ML techniques, communicates clearly, takes initiative, and is motivated to build for the public good.

Additional information

GovTech is an equal opportunity employer and supports an inclusive workplace that welcomes diverse perspectives as a source of innovation. Employee benefits follow a total rewards approach, with a broad and market-competitive set of perks. Flexible work arrangements are supported where the job role allows, and employees are trusted to manage their time responsibly to deliver strong outcomes.

More information about working at GovTech is available through the organisation’s careers page.