Principal Software Engineer Distributed Systems (Singapore / China)

Job Summary

This role could be based in Singapore or China. When you start the application process you will be presented with a drop-down menu showing all countries, please ensure that you only select a country where the role is based

The Software Engineer - Distributed Systems designs, builds, and supports highly scalable, resilient, and secure services for critical transaction processing environments. The role focuses on solving complex engineering problems across service orchestration, data consistency, failure recovery, observability, and performance at scale, delivering robust, high-throughput, low-latency critical banking systems. The engineer will be part of a high-performing team focused on engineering excellence and delivery quality. Experience with Go or Java is required. Experience with durable execution platforms such as Temporal, DBOS, or similar frameworks is a strong bonus.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy

• Help shape the engineering direction for critical, high-availability distributed systems.
• Contribute to long-term thinking around scalability, resilience, maintainability, and platform evolution.
• Identify opportunities to simplify complex workflows, reduce operational risk, and improve delivery speed.
• Support adoption of better engineering practices, including automation, reusable patterns, and AI-assisted development where it adds value.
• Think beyond immediate implementation to ensure solutions are robust, future-ready, and aligned with evolving business needs.
• Bring structured problem-solving and strong critical thinking to ambiguous technical challenges.
• Promote engineering excellence, code quality, and operational discipline.
• Contribute to documentation, technical reviews, and continuous improvement activities.
• Undertake additional responsibilities as assigned within the scope of the role.
• Apply secure engineering practices in line with internal governance and compliance expectations.
• Build solutions that support integrity, reliability, traceability, and controlled operational behaviour.

Business

• Design and build distributed backend services for high-volume transaction processing.
• Develop scalable, fault-tolerant solutions for transaction-heavy systems.
• Implement resilient integration patterns across APIs, queues, streaming platforms, and internal services.
• Build strong validation, integrity, idempotency, and recovery mechanisms to support safe and consistent processing.
• Deliver solutions that improve availability, consistency, and operational resilience.
• Translate business and operational needs into well-structured technical implementations.

People & Talent

• Collaborate effectively with engineering peers and contribute to a positive, high-performance team culture.
• Share knowledge, learn continuously, and support skill development through strong technical contribution and example.
• Demonstrate self-driven ownership, curiosity, and a strong can-do attitude.
• Work constructively with others to solve hard technical problems and deliver against commitments.

Governance

• Follow engineering standards, design principles, and delivery practices that support safe and reliable execution.
• Apply disciplined software development practices, including testing, code quality, and maintainability.
• Support the use of AI development tools responsibly through sound engineering judgement and hardening practices.
• Maintain clear decision-making, traceability, and accountability in technical delivery.

Regulatory & Business Conduct

• Display exemplary conduct and live by the Group’s Values and Code of Conduct.
• Take personal responsibility for embedding the highest standards of ethics, including regulatory and business conduct, across Standard Chartered Bank. This includes understanding and ensuring compliance with, in letter and spirit, all applicable laws, regulations, guidelines and the Group Code of Conduct.
• Effectively and collaboratively identify, escalate, mitigate and resolve risk, conduct and compliance matters.

Key stakeholders

• Work with product, platform, engineering, and delivery stakeholders to ensure solutions meet technical and operational needs.
• Engage with relevant technical partners to align on implementation approach, dependencies, and delivery outcomes.
• Communicate clearly on progress, risks, and technical decisions.
• Build effective working relationships across teams to support delivery of complex engineering outcomes.

Other Responsibilities

• Embrace and practise SCB’s brand promise of Here for Good and corporate values
• Perform other responsibilities assigned under Group, Country, Business or Functional policies and procedures
• Responsible for building a culture of good conduct

Our Ideal Candidate

• 10+ years’ experience inStrong software engineering background with hands-on experience in Go or Java.
• Proven experience designing and building distributed systems or high-availability backend services.
• Strong software architecture experience, with the ability to design scalable, resilient, and maintainable distributed systems.
• Solid knowledge of software design patterns and the ability to apply them effectively in real-world engineering solutions.
• Solid understanding of concurrency, service-to-service communication, and failure handling.
• Experience with high-throughput, low-latency, and resilient system design.
• Familiarity with transactional consistency, idempotency, retries, and recovery patterns.
• Experience working in environments with strict reliability, observability, and operational requirements.
• Experience working on critical financial or transaction-intensive systems is highly desirable.
• Experience with durable execution frameworks (for example Temporal, DBOS, or similar) is a strong bonus.
• Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools and workflows.
• Experience with AI hardening design, including safe, reliable, and controlled use of AI in engineering workflows.
• Self-driven, curious, and optimistic with a strong can-do attitude.
• Good communication skills and a collaborative engineering mindset.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Role Specific Technical Competencies

• Software Engineering
• Software Development
• Application Design, Architecture

About Standard Chartered

We're a global bank connecting clients to our differentiated network, offering growth opportunities in the world's most dynamic markets. Our strategy, which combines cross-border capabilities and leading wealth management expertise, helps us deliver our purpose - to drive commerce and prosperity through our unique diversity.

Over our 170-year history, and across a unique geographical footprint connecting Asia, Africa and the Middle East to each other and the world, we've built a bank like no other, with diverse capabilities and partnerships that set us apart.

What we offer

• Being part of an inclusive and values driven organisation, one that embraces and celebrates our unique diversity, across our teams, business functions, and geographies.
• In line with our Fair Pay Charter, we offer a competitive salary and benefits to support your mental, physical, financial and social wellbeing.
• Core bank funding for retirement savings, medical and life insurance, with flexible and voluntary benefits available in some locations.
• Time-off including annual leave, parental/maternity (20 weeks), sabbatical (12 months maximum) and volunteering leave (3 days), along with minimum global standards for annual and public holiday, which is combined to 30 days minimum.
• Flexible working options based around home and office locations, with flexible working patterns.
• Proactive wellbeing support through Unmind, a market-leading digital wellbeing platform, development courses for resilience and other human skills, global employee assistance programme, sick leave, mental health first-aiders and self-help toolkits.
• A continuous learning culture to support your growth, with opportunities to reskill and upskill and access to physical, virtual, and digital learning.

Visit our careers website to learn more about us: www.sc.com/careers.

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