Deputy Director, Government Incident Reporting Ops

Role Purpose

The Deputy Director (DD), Government Incident Reporting Ops, leads a high-performing operational team responsible for centralizing, assessing, and managing the full spectrum of Whole-of-Government (WOG) incident reports across all Singapore Government agencies.

The scope of coverage is multi-disciplinary, encompassing cybersecurity/data incidents, physical security breaches, public-facing service disruptions, and general operational failures . The DD ensures swift severity assessment, accurate fact-gathering, and seamless leadership escalation, while driving a WOG continuous learning culture to prevent systemic recurrence.

Key Responsibilities

Multi-Domain Operational Leadership

• Lead daily operations for the WOG Incident Reporting framework, ensuring all submissions across cyber, physical, and operational domains are triaged and validated accurately.
• Demonstrate sharp acumen to make critical judgment calls on complex, multi-domain incidents, ensuring appropriate escalation and containment strategies are triggered according to SOPs.
• Review and refine high-quality, high-stakes incident summaries and assessments for senior leadership presentation under tight timelines.

Process Optimization & Culture Building

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to streamline the reporting workflow, leveraging technology to make reporting frictionless and encourage timely submissions from all agencies.
• Foster a "Just Culture" across the public service, prioritizing psychological safety so agencies report incidents transparently without fear of blame.

WOG Knowledge Management & Continuous Learning

• Transform diverse incident data into actionable insights, identifying trends and cross-domain vulnerabilities.
• Develop effective mechanisms (e.g., cross-agency sharing sessions, post-incident reviews, systemic playbooks) to ensure lessons are institutionalized WOG.

Talent Development

• Mentor and develop team officers, uplifting their technical literacy across different incident domains and honing their analytical capabilities.

• Requirements & Qualifications
• Technical & Domain Knowledge (Critical)

• Cross-Domain Literacy: Strong foundational knowledge across IT infrastructure, Cybersecurity operations, and Physical Security frameworks . Must be able to speak the language of both tech engineers and physical security teams.
• Incident Triage Expertise: Familiarity with incident classification models, threat landscapes, and standard risk matrix frameworks across both digital and physical environments.

Professional Experience

• Experience in Large-Scale Operations: At least 8 years of professional experience managing complex operations, incident response, crisis management, or operational risk.
• Organizational Scale: Proven track record of navigating and operating effectively within large, complex organizations (e.g., Multi-National Corporations (MNCs), major financial institutions, critical infrastructure operators, or public sector agencies).
• Stakeholder Management: Demonstrated ability to manage diverse, high-level stakeholders and navigate matrixed organizational structures or multi-party ecosystems.
• Public Sector Familiarity (Preferred but not mandatory): Prior experience within the Singapore Public Service, or a strong conceptual understanding of Whole-of-Government (WOG) governance structures and inter-agency dynamics, is highly advantageous. Private sector candidates with a strong adaptability to public sector governance are welcome to apply.
• Process Improvement: Experience in operations design or process optimization (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma, Agile) to simplify reporting workflows and drive efficiency.

Critical Skills & Competencies

• Executive Communication: Exceptional command of written and spoken English. Ability to translate highly technical, ambiguous, or complex incidents (like a zero-day exploit or a complex supply-chain failure) into concise, plain-language briefs for senior management.
• High-Stakes Diplomacy: Ability to manage sensitive conversations with senior agency leaders, challenging an agency’s self-assessment firmly but tactfully to ensure proper treatment.
• Data Analytics & Pattern Recognition: Ability to look beyond individual incidents to identify systemic clusters or root causes across the government ecosystem.

Key Personal Attributes

• Mental Agility & Resilience: Thrives in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment where variables change rapidly during concurrent crises.
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Essential for building trust with stressed reportees during an ongoing incident.
• Uncompromising Integrity: Absolute discretion in handling highly sensitive, restricted, or politically charged information.