Senior/Lead Research Engineer (Software) - CEMS

About the role

The Centre of Excellence in Maritime Safety (CEMS) is a national R&D centre between Singapore Polytechnic and the Singapore Maritime Institute, focused on digital solutions and training systems for maritime safety. The appointee joins the CEMS AI & Software team to develop digital solutions for simulator training and assessment and to innovate training pedagogy. The role may also contribute to department- and school-level software initiatives supporting digitalisation and automation across R&D, operations and education.

Key responsibilities

• Lead projects and give technical contributions across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering with industry partners and internal stakeholders.
• Work with the AI team to deploy and integrate AI solutions such as natural language processing, computer vision and data analytics into simulation platforms.
• Collaborate with third-party simulator vendors to design reusable code libraries and scalable APIs.
• Improve existing software by finding performance bottlenecks, refactoring codebases and improving maintainability and scalability.
• Contribute to the concept, proposals and implementation of new R&D projects aligned with CEMS strategy.
• Mentor junior software engineers and student interns on best practices, code quality and project execution.
• Prepare and present project updates and technical reports to the CEMS Governing Board and senior management.

Required profile

• Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related field.
• Experience in production-grade software development and backend and/or frontend application development.
• RESTful API design and implementation with modern frameworks (e.g. ASP.NET Core, Spring Boot, Django, Express.js).
• Programming in one or more modern languages (C#, C++, Java, Python) and quick learning of new technologies.
• Relational and non-relational database experience (MySQL, Oracle, MongoDB).
• Object-oriented design, design patterns, CI/CD and familiarity with Git, GitLab and Docker.
• Ability to prototype quickly and strong communication skills.
• End-to-end AI implementation with TensorFlow or PyTorch is a plus.