Data Scientist, Data Practice

About GovTech Singapore

GovTech is Singapore’s lead government technology agency, powering Smart Nation efforts and digital transformation across the public sector. As the Centre of Excellence for Infocomm Technology and Smart Systems, it builds capabilities in data science and AI, application development, smart city technology, digital infrastructure, and cybersecurity.

The organisation offers a purpose-driven environment focused on creating public value, with a strong emphasis on continuous learning, craftsmanship, and collaborative delivery. Its teams work with agile, bold, and collaborative values to design citizen- and business-centric digital services.

About the Data Practice

The Data Practice focuses on driving innovation and setting standards for the responsible use of data across the Whole-of-Government ecosystem. The team operates at the crossroads of data engineering, AI, privacy, and governance, building standards, platforms, and tools that help agencies create high-quality data products and unlock value from data for public good.

A major part of the work is making responsible data use practical at scale. This includes creating technical guardrails, privacy-preserving workflows, evaluation methods, and reusable standards so agencies can use data safely for analytics, AI, and digital services. The team explores topics such as AI privacy, context-aware anonymisation, synthetic data generation, federated AI and computing, encrypted computation, differential privacy, and confidential computing.

The role bridges policy, research, and implementation by testing new approaches, validating them through agency pilots, and turning them into standards, implementation guides, and government tools.

Role Overview

This is an intermediate-to-senior Data Scientist role. At a minimum, you will conduct rigorous research and experimentation to assess emerging privacy solutions, design scalable workflows suitable for government adoption, and convert findings into practical tools, guidelines, and systems used across agencies. Depending on your experience, you may also help shape team priorities, identify new technology opportunities, work across policy and engineering, and drive initiatives from problem definition to large-scale deployment.

What You Will Do

• Plan and carry out structured experiments to test privacy-enhancing technologies and AI-enabled solutions.
• Create proof-of-concepts that show whether ideas work in real-world settings and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Keep up with academic and technical research, then translate useful findings into deployable solutions.
• Share knowledge through publications and collaboration with government and international partners.
• Work directly with government agencies to understand privacy needs, operational limits, and implementation constraints.
• Design and run pilot programmes to evaluate privacy technology solutions.
• Collect user feedback, refine solutions, and improve them based on deployment learnings.
• Provide technical advice and hands-on support to agencies adopting privacy technologies.
• Spot opportunities where privacy-enhancing technologies can solve recurring data challenges across government.
• Design scalable solutions for adoption across the Whole-of-Government environment.
• Define practical implementation paths and adoption frameworks for new privacy technologies.
• Collaborate with data scientists, data engineers, software engineers, and product managers.
• Work with agencies to align technical solutions with regulatory and governance requirements.
• For more senior candidates: identify emerging technologies, prioritise high-impact problem areas, lead projects from exploration to rollout, coordinate with policy, engineering, and vendor stakeholders, and mentor team members.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Data Science, Business Analytics, or a related discipline.
• At least 2 to 3 years of relevant professional experience.
• Strong grounding in machine learning, with practical experience in model development and experimentation.
• Advanced Python programming ability, along with hands-on use of ML libraries such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn.
• Capability to inspect model behaviour, troubleshoot training issues, and design experiments to improve performance and reliability.
• Proven ability to read, interpret, synthesise, and assess academic papers and technical literature critically.
• Experience planning and running rigorous experiments to test hypotheses and measure effectiveness.
• Comfort with ambiguous problem statements and the ability to develop novel approaches to complex challenges.
• Curiosity and eagerness to learn new areas, especially data privacy.
• Strong communication skills for explaining technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving, collaborative Agile environment.
• Ability to communicate complex concepts clearly to diverse stakeholders.
• Nice-to-have: exposure to privacy-enhancing technologies such as anonymisation, synthetic data generation, or differential privacy.
• Nice-to-have: familiarity with frontend integration workflows such as Next.js or React.
• Nice-to-have: experience working in multi-disciplinary teams.

Perks and Benefits

GovTech offers a total-rewards package with market-competitive benefits, including leave support for work-life needs and employee wellness programmes.

Flexible work arrangements are available depending on the job role, with trust-based time management to help employees deliver their best work wherever appropriate.

Additional Information

This is a full-time onsite role based in Singapore.

GovTech encourages a learning-oriented, collaborative culture and builds products for public good.