[What the role is]
The PDO Product Lead serve as in-house product experts, strengthening product capabilities, through best practices, apprenticeship programs, and upholding quality product standards across disciplines.
The product lead will play a pivotal role to drive and shape the Finance cluster level (i.e. MOF-HQ, ACRA, AGD, Singapore Customs, Toteboard and VITAL) product strategy and portfolio, maintain product standards, build talent, and guide cross-agency products. Additionally, PDO Product Lead will serve as functional lead for key Finance Cluster products of significant importance and scale to retain their craft and execution skills.
The PDO Product Lead will provide craft leadership and capability uplift. He/She will report to MOF-HQ/Cluster CIO.
[What you will be working on]
PDO Product Lead for Finance Cluster
The Finance Cluster serves as Singapore's financial steward, driving strategic outcomes for the public good while fostering inclusive and sustainable growth within a high-performance government framework. The cluster oversees fiscal policy, reserves management, and resource allocation to deliver national priorities. It champions open, transparent, and fair international finance, trade, and tax systems whilst delivering digitally-enabled central corporate systems and efficient shared services. The Finance Cluster also supports a conducive and trusted business environment, contributing to Singapore's development as an inclusive, resilient, and vibrant community through strategic grant programmes. Through these integrated functions, the Finance Cluster creates a better Singapore by ensuring sound financial stewardship whilst enabling economic growth and social progress.
The Product Lead in a Product Development Office (PDO) is a modern product leader - the Head of Product for Finance Cluster - someone who has shipped real products, understands how to navigate ambiguity, builds product capability, and can guide teams through the full journey from problem definition to scaled impact.
What's the Role About
Product Development Offices (PDOs) bring together Product, Design, and Engineering leadership to help Ministries and their agencies deliver digital products faster, more securely, and with better user outcomes. Each PDO partners closely with Agencies CIO/CD, supports multiple agency product teams, and connects those teams back to GovTech's shared platforms and practices.
The PDO Product Lead serve as in-house product experts, strengthening product capabilities, through best practices, apprenticeship programs, and upholding quality product standards across disciplines.
The product lead will play a pivotal role to drive and shape the Finance cluster level (i.e. MOF-HQ, ACRA, AGD, Singapore Customs, Toteboard and VITAL) product strategy and portfolio, maintain product standards, build talent, and guide cross-agency products. Additionally, PDO Product Lead will serve as functional lead for key Finance Cluster products of significant importance and scale to retain their craft and execution skills.
The PDO Product Lead will provide craft leadership and capability uplift. He/She will report to MOF-HQ/Cluster CIO.
What You'll Do
- 1. Strategic Leadership & Problem Identification
- Lead macro-level product strategyand vision for the Finance cluster. Advise MOF-HQ/Cluster CIO on multi-year digital roadmap, advise on prioritisation of high-impact services over low-value digitalization.
- Identify and prioritize key problem statementsacross the Finance cluster, surfacing common pain points and use cases to the central Product Management Practice (PMP) to inform the central product practice. Break down high level policy objectives into product problems and guide on how to bridge agency policy priorities to problems statements/products.
- Make strategic decisions on sourcingand resource allocation (e.g. in-, co- or out-sourcing decisions), guide cluster agencies to invest in solutions that deliver maximum value and optimize for speed-to-market, long-term maintenance costs, and vendor risk management.
- 2. Product Development Leadership & Capability Building
- Accountable for the full talent lifecycle:Hiring, onboarding, mentoring, and leadership for agency product teams.
- Build product management capabilitieswithin the appointed cluster by delivering mentoring and training programs in accordance with the Product Management Practice.
- Establish best practicesfor product discovery, prioritization, and delivery, ensuring teams move from feature delivery to outcome ownership. Institutionalize best practices for BAU system health, ensuring legacy modernization is balanced against new innovation.
- 3. Practice Implementation & Execution for Key Finance Cluster Products
- Strategic Vision and Leadership, lead the product team to develop and articulate a compelling product vision and strategy aligned with the MOF/Finance Cluster's overall goals.
- Define team structures, roles, and processes, implementing agile product development and user research best practices tailored to the agency context.
- Drive Practice Implementationby ensuring product teams are structured for success and hold clear accountability for their domains. Oversee the entire product lifecycle from ideation to launch and post-launch optimization. Ensure timely delivery of high-quality products.
- Advise a product team kill a bad ideaearly by designing a low-fidelity validation experiment (POV) instead of building the full software.
- Reviewing Product Requirement Document (PRD)or Strategy Deck to ensure it has clear success metrics, a defined user persona, and alignment with GovTech platforms.
- Lead in development of product roadmapand introduction of appropriate digital solutions to partner with cross functional business teams, WOG and industry partners to achieve greater business outcomes
- Stakeholder Collaboration, partnering with Engineering and Design leads to ensure alignment and effective communication throughout the product development process and descope a project that is at risk of missing its launch window, preserving the core value proposition.
- 4. Central Practice Contribution (to Product Management Practice)
- Assess and evangelize central product doctrines, determining how they can be implemented at the Finance Cluster and recommending adaptations where necessary.
- Provide feedback on central practice applicability, sharing best practices and lessons learned from the cluster with the wider GovTech community.
- Drive Platform & Service Evaluationby evaluating and prioritizing GovTech central platforms and components where fit-for-purpose, reducing duplication of work.
[What we are looking for]
What we are looking for
- Bachelor's degree. MBA or advanced degree preferred.
- 10+ years of experience in product management, with a proven track record of managing successful products and mentoring other product managers.
- Strong leadership and team management skills
- Experienced across the full product lifecycle- comfortable with ambiguity, problem framing, validating demand before building, and managing the lifecycle of complex and large products (including sunsetting).
- Product credible- has shipped and managed complex products and can discuss prioritization trade-offs with confidence.
- Practical delivery mindset- confident in navigating product stages/cycles, knows when to ship an MVP to learn, and when to invest in deep feature richness.
- Cross-practice collaborator- partners naturally with Engineering and Design to make holistic decisions.
- Clear communicator- can explain product strategy and the why to Ministry CIOs, Policy Directors, and delivery teams alike.
- Outcome-oriented- relentlessly focuses teams on (e.g., Time Saved, Adoption Rate) rather than (e.g., Number of Features Delivered).
- Trusted advisor- earns confidence through sound judgment and the ability to say no to bad ideas constructively. Navigates and aligns stakeholders without compromising product integrity
- Ecosystem thinker- balances the needs of individual agencies with the coherence of the overall Government digital service landscape.
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
- Experience with agile methodologies and product management tools.
- Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
