Data Scientist

What the role is

About Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA)

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is Singapore’s planning authority. Our mission is to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play. We plan and facilitate the physical development of Singapore, in partnership with agencies and the community, to create a vibrant, sustainable and cosmopolitan city of distinction.

URA has undergone a digitalisation journey to harness Geospatial and Data Analytics for more data-informed planning. URA was recognized as the Asia Pacific 2017 regional DX Leader in Talent Acceleration by IDC and received the 2019 Business Transformation Award from PSD. URA has embarked on a Digitalization 2.0 effort to progress from planning analytics, to strengthening the use of Modelling and Simulation, as well as AI technologies, in urban planning and design. URA is also the Whole-of-Government “Urban Planning & Design Technology Centre of Excellence” (URBEX), and will play the role to digitalise and cohere the urban planning and design ecosystem in its use of data, tools and models.

About Design and Planning Lab

Be part of the URA Design and Planning Lab, which spearheads development and experimentation of smart planning technologies through Ops-Tech collaborations. Our teams, with capabilities in data management, engineering and governance, software development, urban design technologies, data science, modelling and simulation, work closely with planners, architects and policy makers across various agencies to generate insights and develop digital solutions to tackle interesting challenges of Singapore’s urban planning needs.

What you will be working on

As a Senior / Executive Data Scientist, you will serve as a subject matter specialist in the application of data science techniques, leveraging a wide range of datasets to unlock actionable insights on urban trends and planning issues to shape the future of Singapore’s urban environment. You will drive analytics efforts and partner business leads and management to develop impactful models and tools for the Urban Planning & Design domain.

You will work collaboratively with internal user groups (Urban Planners, Architects, Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Geospatial Analysts, Modelling & Simulation Specialists, Software Developers, etc.) and agency partners in the scoping, architecting, development, integration and deployment of data science solutions using cloud or on-premise infrastructure. You will stay up-to-date on emerging data science trends, methods and technologies and collaborate with other Whole-of-Government agencies, academic and industry partners to harness expertise, and formulate strategies to inform and address knowledge and capability gaps.

You will need to present to URA senior management and partner agencies, and explain complex technical information and analyses in a manner where the key principles, concepts and implications are easy for a general audience to understand. You will work with URA team members to develop and adhere to data science best practices, including documentation, validation and reproducibility of data science work. As part of capability-building, you will help to promote the growth of the data science and analytics Community of Practice and be involved in training URA team members and the planning community in the application of data science techniques.

What we are looking for

Requirements:

Have a keen interest in the planning of cities and in applying data science techniques to analyse large multi-faceted datasets that will enable urban planners to make Singapore a more liveable, sustainable city.

Minimum Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Data Analytics, Statistics, Mathematics or related discipline. Certifications, Master or PhD degree in stated fields is a plus.

At least 4 years of relevant hands-on experience, with a strong understanding of data science methodologies, data analysis and visualisation:

Strong skills and ability to analyse and model data, extracting insights from both structured and unstructured datasets to address business problems

Ability to evaluate data quality and to develop tools to correct anomalies in collected data

Experience in developing and applying machine learning algorithms or frameworks, including classification, prediction, forecasting, reinforcement learning, deep learning, natural language procesing, etc.

Knowledge and understanding of data science model development and workflows, including frontend and backend development and integration, database technologies, cloud technologies, MLOps and DataOps

Experience in developing and deploying cloud-based production-grade models and data science products

Proficiency in programming languages like Python, R, SQL (including libraries e.g. pandas, pyspark)

Proficiency in data visualisation skills and visual analytics platforms (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)

Strong interpersonal, written and communication skills, with ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical / business / senior management stakeholders

Have a positive attitude, collaborative and growth mindset, working closely with internal and external teams and partners to build organisational and sectoral capability.

Able to work in a fast-paced environment, including working as part of agile teams for the timely delivery of data science products.

Preferences:

Experience with geospatial data analysis tools and techniques (e.g. QGIS, ArcGIS with arcpy)

Experience with graph theory or related projects

• Experience with big data processing frameworks and tools (e.g. Spark, Hadoop)

What the role is

About Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA)

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is Singapore’s planning authority. Our mission is to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play. We plan and facilitate the physical development of Singapore, in partnership with agencies and the community, to create a vibrant, sustainable and cosmopolitan city of distinction.

URA has undergone a digitalisation journey to harness Geospatial and Data Analytics for more data-informed planning. URA was recognized as the Asia Pacific 2017 regional DX Leader in Talent Acceleration by IDC and received the 2019 Business Transformation Award from PSD. URA has embarked on a Digitalization 2.0 effort to progress from planning analytics, to strengthening the use of Modelling and Simulation, as well as AI technologies, in urban planning and design. URA is also the Whole-of-Government “Urban Planning & Design Technology Centre of Excellence” (URBEX), and will play the role to digitalise and cohere the urban planning and design ecosystem in its use of data, tools and models.

About Design and Planning Lab

Be part of the URA Design and Planning Lab, which spearheads development and experimentation of smart planning technologies through Ops-Tech collaborations. Our teams, with capabilities in data management, engineering and governance, software development, urban design technologies, data science, modelling and simulation, work closely with planners, architects and policy makers across various agencies to generate insights and develop digital solutions to tackle interesting challenges of Singapore’s urban planning needs.

What you will be working on

As a Senior / Executive Data Scientist, you will serve as a subject matter specialist in the application of data science techniques, leveraging a wide range of datasets to unlock actionable insights on urban trends and planning issues to shape the future of Singapore’s urban environment. You will drive analytics efforts and partner business leads and management to develop impactful models and tools for the Urban Planning & Design domain.

You will work collaboratively with internal user groups (Urban Planners, Architects, Data Engineers, Data Scientists, Geospatial Analysts, Modelling & Simulation Specialists, Software Developers, etc.) and agency partners in the scoping, architecting, development, integration and deployment of data science solutions using cloud or on-premise infrastructure. You will stay up-to-date on emerging data science trends, methods and technologies and collaborate with other Whole-of-Government agencies, academic and industry partners to harness expertise, and formulate strategies to inform and address knowledge and capability gaps.

You will need to present to URA senior management and partner agencies, and explain complex technical information and analyses in a manner where the key principles, concepts and implications are easy for a general audience to understand. You will work with URA team members to develop and adhere to data science best practices, including documentation, validation and reproducibility of data science work. As part of capability-building, you will help to promote the growth of the data science and analytics Community of Practice and be involved in training URA team members and the planning community in the application of data science techniques.

What we are looking for

Requirements:

● Have a keen interest in the planning of cities and in applying data science techniques to analyse large multi-faceted datasets that will enable urban planners to make Singapore a more liveable, sustainable city.

● Minimum Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Data Analytics, Statistics, Mathematics or related discipline. Certifications, Master or PhD degree in stated fields is a plus.

● At least 4 years of relevant hands-on experience, with a strong understanding of data science methodologies, data analysis and visualisation:

○ Strong skills and ability to analyse and model data, extracting insights from both structured and unstructured datasets to address business problems

○ Ability to evaluate data quality and to develop tools to correct anomalies in collected data

○ Experience in developing and applying machine learning algorithms or frameworks, including classification, prediction, forecasting, reinforcement learning, deep learning, natural language procesing, etc.

○ Knowledge and understanding of data science model development and workflows, including frontend and backend development and integration, database technologies, cloud technologies, MLOps and DataOps

○ Experience in developing and deploying cloud-based production-grade models and data science products

○ Proficiency in programming languages like Python, R, SQL (including libraries e.g. pandas, pyspark)

○ Proficiency in data visualisation skills and visual analytics platforms (e.g. Tableau, PowerBI)

○ Strong interpersonal, written and communication skills, with ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical / business / senior management stakeholders

● Have a positive attitude, collaborative and growth mindset, working closely with internal and external teams and partners to build organisational and sectoral capability.

● Able to work in a fast-paced environment, including working as part of agile teams for the timely delivery of data science products.

Preferences:

● Experience with geospatial data analysis tools and techniques (e.g. QGIS, ArcGIS with arcpy)

● Experience with graph theory or related projects

• Experience with big data processing frameworks and tools (e.g. Spark, Hadoop)