Software Engineer

Activate Interactive Pte Ltd (“Activate”) is a leading technology consultancy headquartered in Singapore with a presence in Malaysia and Indonesia. Our clients are empowered with quality, cost-effective, and impactful end-to-end application development, like mobile and web applications, and cloud technology that remove technology roadblocks and increase their business efficiency.

We believe in positively impacting the lives of people around us and the environment we live in through the use of technology. Hence, we are committed to providing a conducive environment for all employees to realise their full potential, who in turn have the opportunity to continuously drive innovation.

We are searching for our next team members to join our growing team.

If you love the idea of being part of a growing company with exciting prospects in mobile and web technologies that create positive impact on people’s lives, then we would love to hear from you.

Co-Development Business Unit is hiring for Software Engineer

You will work in Singapore Government Agencies

Internal Code: A26316

This is a fixed term contract role. The engagement is 1 year.

The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) is Singapore’s lead ministry for social and family policies, working to build a caring and inclusive society where individuals and families can thrive. Its work spans family services, social assistance, early childhood, disability support and community development, delivered through programmes and a network of Social Service Offices, Family Service Centres and community partners.

GovTech’s Government Digital Transformation (GDT) team is forward deployed to support MSF, working closely with teams across the ministry to build, modernise and operate digital services. Our engineers work on different initiatives across the MSF family, including Case Central, ComLink+, the Social Service Coordination Centre, Early Childhood programmes and Sector Futures & Technology.

We are hiring across Software Engineering (SWE), Quality Engineering / QA and DevOps. Depending on the team and project, you may specialise in one area or work across multiple parts of the engineering lifecycle.

Technology is only one part of what we assess. We are looking for engineers with strong fundamentals who can apply them pragmatically to real-world problems.

We value people who:

• Take ownership — comfortable taking a problem from requirements and design through implementation, testing, deployment and production support.
• Solve problems, not just tasks — investigate root causes, question assumptions and understand the problem behind the request.
• Think in trade-offs — balance delivery timelines, security, maintainability, cost, operational complexity and long-term sustainability.
• Work well with ambiguity — able to turn business problems and high-level requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Care about engineering quality — testing, maintainability, documentation, observability and security are part of engineering, not afterthoughts.
• Are pragmatic — able to deliver within real-world constraints including legacy systems, security requirements, compliance and existing organisational processes.
• Communicate clearly — explain technical decisions and their implications to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Learn and share — document what you learn, share knowledge and build reusable patterns that can benefit other teams.
• Take responsibility for what you build — some of our systems handle sensitive information and support vulnerable members of society, so sound judgement and ethical responsibility matter.

For more experienced candidates, we also look for the ability to operate independently, make pragmatic technical decisions and create reusable capabilities that benefit teams beyond the immediate project.

Technical Capabilities

You do not need to be an expert in every technology listed below. The exact requirements vary depending on the team and role. We value strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to learn.

The exact work will depend on the MSF division, product and team you join. You could be:

• Building a new citizen- or officer-facing digital product
• Developing APIs and backend services
• Building modern frontend applications

• Developing secure data ingestion and ETL pipelines
• Integrating systems across government agencies and partners
• Modernising existing Java or platform-based applications
• Building cloud infrastructure and deployment pipelines
• Improving automated testing and engineering quality
• Establishing observability and operational practices
• Implementing security and compliance controls
• Creating reusable engineering capabilities that can be adopted by multiple MSF teams
• The environment includes both greenfield and brownfield work. You may work on a small, high-impact engineering team building a new platform end-to-end, or work within a larger modernisation initiative involving existing systems and technologies.
• For example, one current initiative involves building a centralised platform intended to reduce data silos across government agencies, schools, healthcare institutions and social-service organisations. The engineering work spans data pipelines, backend services, React interfaces and cloud infrastructure.
• Other parts of the MSF environment involve modernisation alongside legacy systems and a diverse technology landscape including Salesforce, OutSystems, Appian, Pega, Kotlin, Java and GCC/AWS.

What are we looking for?

• Backend development using Java, Kotlin, Python, Node.js / TypeScript, Go, C# or similar
• Frontend development using React / Next.js, Vue, Angular or similar
• RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs
• Microservices and distributed-system concepts
• SQL and relational databases such as PostgreSQL or MySQL
• NoSQL databases where appropriate
• Data processing and ETL pipelines
• System integrations and event-driven architectures
• Automated testing and maintainable software design
• Git-based development and code reviews
• Docker and containerisation
• Cloud deployment and production operations
• Our current environments include Java, Kotlin, Python, TypeScript and React, but we value strong engineering principles over mastery of a particular programming languages

Interview & Assessment Process

There may be one or more rounds of interviews and/or technical assessments, depending on the role, seniority and team.

The process may include discussions with engineering leads, hiring managers and other members of the team. We may explore:

• Projects you have previously worked on and your specific contribution
• Software engineering fundamentals
• Coding and problem solving
• System and application design
• Testing and quality-engineering approaches
• Cloud, infrastructure and DevOps knowledge
• Security and compliance considerations
• How you diagnose technical problems
• How you make and communicate engineering trade-offs
• How you approach ambiguous problems and requirements

Some roles may include a practical technical exercise. For example, an existing assessment asks candidates to translate an architecture into working infrastructure using Terraform or OpenTofu, identify potential security weaknesses, discuss architectural trade-offs and make recommendations for extending the system.

For more senior candidates, discussions may go deeper into examples of working independently, balancing immediate delivery with longer-term sustainability, dealing with legacy or compliance constraints, and creating reusable capabilities that have benefited other teams.

We are less interested in memorised answers or technology buzzwords than in how you think, what you have actually built, the decisions you made, and whether you can explain the reasoning and trade-offs behind those decisions.

Build Technology for Public Good

Whether your strength is Software Engineering, Quality Engineering or DevOps, you will have the opportunity to work on meaningful systems while improving how technology is built and operated within MSF.

We are looking for engineers who want to build reliable systems, solve difficult problems, take ownership and leave the technology and teams they work with better than they found them.

What do we offer in return?

Competitive Compensation:  Market competitive salary and variable performance bonus aligned to your skills, impact, and contribution. 

Benefits:  Outpatient medical, specialist medical coverage and generous customisable flexi benefits, or flexi allowance; life and health insurance, thoughtful perks like special occasions “red packet” and CNY goodies, etc. 

Employee Wellness: Support for your physical, mental, and overall well-being through year-round initiatives. 

Growth & Development:  Learning programmes, certification support, and a dedicated staff development budget. (We are a “SHRI 2025 Gold winner” in “Learning & Development; Coaching & Mentoring”) 

Career Progression: Structured career pathways that enable you to grow along a technical/domain expert track or a leadership track. 

Competency Framework: A structured and practical framework to support you to develop, perform, and succeed. 

Flexible Work Arrangement: Staff may choose to work flexi-place, flexi-time, and flexi-load based on existing framework 

Why you'll love working with us? 

If you are looking for opportunities to collaborate with leading industry experts and be surrounded by highly motivated and talented peers, we welcome you to join us. We provide all employees with equal opportunities to grow and develop with us. We believe your success is our success. 

Does it sound like something you are interested in exploring further? Please be in touch with our team for an initial chat.

Activate Interactive Singapore is an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions will be based on merit, qualifications and abilities. Activate Interactive Pte Ltd does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, colour, religion, gender, sexuality, national origin, age, disability, marital status or any other characteristics protected by law. 

Protecting your privacy and the security of your data are longstanding top priorities for Activate Interactive Pte Ltd. 

Your personal data will be processed for the purposes of managing Activate Interactive Pte Ltd’s recruitment related activities, which include setting up and conducting interviews and tests for applicants, evaluating and assessing the results, and as is otherwise needed in the recruitment and hiring processes. 

Please consult our Privacy Notice () to know more about how we collect, use, and transfer the personal data of our candidates. Here you can find how you can request for access, correction and/or withdrawal of your Personal Data.