IT Infrastructure project/programme manager

[Singapore2016]

Hey Everybody,

I’m looking for help and/or advice, I have been relocated from London to Singapore by my company earlier this year with an EP, my partner is now looking for opportunities to come and join me here in Singapore.

He is a talented programme manager/senior project manager with core experience in implementing large scale infrastructure changes, delivering projects to deadlines, and providing business-critical IT service management globally and working with external vendors. His most recent experience is implementing a robotics platform and cloud implementation along with the respective support models. This has been primarily in the Finance and Trading arena but he is open to other sectors.
I am wondering if anyone has any demand for such roles or is aware of people/companies or agencies recruiting for such roles.

If anyone has any contacts or advice or knows of any company that is looking to hire, then please drop me an email.

Your help would be much appreciated!
Many thanks
Charlotte

[sundaymorningstaple]

Strong Eagle, this sounds like right up your alley if you were still here.

[ecureilx]

Strong Eagle, this sounds like right up your alley if you were still here.

Unless the guy has some form of pass of convenience, none of my recruiter friends want to talk

[Singapore2016]

Hi - thanks for the replies. When you say pass of convenience I am guessing
You are referring to visa/ability to stay in the country?
We are both from the UK and have been together 8 years but not married - hence no dependant pass. But I understand that he could get a LTVP ?
I am sponsored by a company here with an EP and earn in excess of the $5K monthly salary.

Would any of your contacts be willing to have a conversation? It would be much appreciated!
Thanks
Charlotte

[bgd]

Sg can be a tough market to crack it you aren't transferred in. I do know of a bank which laid off about 100 people in IT Infrastructure 2 weeks back. No idea of the roles or seniority involved.

[daveco23]

Google, Facebook and especially Microsoft are hiring in SG for similar roles. They do not use recruitment companies so he'll need to do a lot of research on their careers pages.

[brian_singapore]

If Robotics = RPA, this is being undertaken by most banks in SG. Oddly, it's not showing up in a lot of job postings just yet but it's something that should be sellable. Update Linked-In with the skill sets / platforms and contact the consultancies who are desperate to hire anyone who can spell RPA backwards so they can put them in-front of potential clients and convince them they know something. (I'm not a bit cynical on this point .... :p)

[Strong Eagle]

I finally chime in. While I would never say never (see brian_singapore comments above), finding the kind of IT infra projects you mentioned in Singapore is getting much more difficult to do.

First, over the past decade the move to actual global integration in ICT has been accelerating within MNC's. Gone are the days when the MNC's regional entities had regional responsibility for ICT projects. And the responsibility for those projects now almost always lies in a global PMO which is not located anywhere near the APAC region. MNC's ship their global people from the US and Europe to run local implementations of global projects.

Second, many technology firms that do big infra projects and managed services projects, have moved the bulk of their employees out of Singapore, with many of them ending up in the technology corridor in Malaysia. I'm not going to say anything about quality but fer sure, the costs of labor are a lot less.

There are two avenues I would pursue, given the circumstances of your partner. The first is to build a list of MNC's with a presence in Singapore, and attempt to get to Singapore via jobs offered elsewhere in the company. My experience has been that when talent is required in Asia, the MNC's import it as opposed to hiring it locally.

Second, I would look at the various managed service providers and infra buildout companies in the region. Offhand, Getronics, CSC, AtoS, Toshiba, and Datacraft, aka Dimension Data, come to mind... I know there are more. These companies manage call centers in Malaysia, India, and the Philippines, offer onsite and tier 2 services, and the name of the game is to take over ICT support services for the MNC's. You'll probably need to be in Singapore to take advantage of these opportunities as the hiring will be local, as will the packages. Forget local firms unless you are Chinese and well connected through uni and national service.

[brian_singapore]

I agree with Strong Eagle. The RPA piece is an emerging technology everyone is jumping on, so actual skills are in short supply.

Even now though, the heavy lifting is done offshore.