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What Are Singapore's Careers Of The Future?

profileJennifer Franslay

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It is a known fact that careers are always evolving based on demand. Jobs that were in demand in the past few years could no longer be in 5 years. As the world grows, it’s important for us to ensure our skill sets continue to be relevant. After all, the world is moving fast, and that means jobs will come and go equally fast too. (Read: These Are The Jobs Disappearing In Singapore)

Maybe you’ve heard of STEM being a thing, or maybe you haven’t. We did the research for you and nailed down the jobs that will boom in the near future. These are all in view of Singapore’s master plans such as the Smart Nation initiative which includes Self-driving Vehicles (yes, it’s a thing the government is pushing for – how thrilling!), the FinTech “Sandbox” (which Seedly is looking forward to) and many more exciting stuff.

Earlier this year, the government announced that it committed $19 billion to research over the next 5 years. That is $19,000,000,000 aka a lot of money. This will all be under the RIE 2020 plan which will focus on:

  • Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering
  • Health and Biomedical Sciences
  • Services and Digital Economy
  • Urban Solutions and Sustainability

With so much money on the table, it’s pretty safe to say that this is where Singapore is headed towards.

There are so many amazing things planned ahead of us as a nation, but this article is all about what professions you should look out for to stay relevant and ride on the master plan waves.

Health Services (e.g. Occupational Therapists)

With an ageing population, there will be an increase in demand for medical services as the elderly face health issues such as heart attacks and strokes. Thus, more health experts will be needed to care for these victims. After all, many of these illnesses need to be watched long-term. While doctors are required to diagnose and treat patients, other staffs are needed for day to day care in the wards, as well as managers who are familiar with the healthcare industry to maintain patient records as the bulk of these shift to digital.

Salaries for Staff Nurses start from $2,300 which can go up to $4,400 in the first 5 years.

Research for Drug Discovery

If you’re into healthcare but do not like to be on the front-facing side of things, consider being a research associate in drug development. With the evolving world and weaker human bodies thanks to our reliance on supplements, researchers need to combat new viruses by coming up with the cure for it. After all, what’s the point in healthcare if there’s no cure for the diseases right? If emerging viruses aren’t your type of thing, you could focus on existing conditions and perhaps find the cure to cancer. In this role, you will be involved in the research, development, design of drugs or even not-so-technical roles such as process development, operations, validations and regulations.

Salaries for Clinical Research Associates start from $3,000 which can go up to $12,000 as you advance to a Manager.

Information Technology (e.g. Software Developers, App Developers)

I’m sure you’ve seen this come up in EVERY article about “future careers” and I’m sure you’re sick of seeing it by now. But there’s good reason why it appears in most articles. Despite what you feel about technology, it’s here, and it’s here to stay. As an increasing number of people spend the bulk of their time on mobile, there is a demand for the development of new applications from games to productivity. The best part of this is while a Bachelor’s in Computer Science is the standard requirement to land a software development job, more firms are open to hiring developers with no formal education in the area (although a formal education, regardless of the major is greatly appreciated) as long as you are equipped the skills. With the vast amount of resources out on the interwebs, many have turned to picking up these skills on their own. While it sounds like a viable career change, it is no simple task. When I say people are picking up the skills on their own, I’m not talking about skills such as HTML & CSS. I’m talking about high-level programming. Definitely not for the faint-hearted. Other booming tech focus areas include Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Salaries for Software Developers start from $3,000 which can go up to $8,000 as you gain experience and lead projects.

Cyber Security Specialist

This one ties in very closely to the previous point so I’ll keep it short. With so much valuable information stored online such as your banking details, private government accounts and perhaps a personal blog where you rant about close ones, it is no wonder security is a top concern for many. Now, imagine how tight you guard over your password and multiply that by a million. That’s probably how tight security is over at huge corporations.

For example, in 2014, there were several high-profile security breaches in corporations such as JP Morgan Chase, Ebay and Snapchat. To tackle such security breaches and malware, we need more cyber security talents to strengthen the defence and ensure everything is well protected.

Salaries for Security Specialists with experience go around $9,000. Awesome pay, but a long way up to earn that title. Still, awesome pay.

Building Services Engineer

In 2009, the government launched a Green Building Masterplan that planned for 80% of buildings in Singapore to be Green Mark certified by the year 2030. As you can tell, we are pretty far from this goal. To get 80% of buildings in Singapore to go green is no easy task and the government has been ramping up on the hiring for Building Engineers who specialises in green buildings. Are you huge on saving the Earth? Maybe this the job you never knew you wanted. In this role, you will deal with a wide range of interesting tasks, such as making sure a building is managing its energy efficiently to the design of the solutions.

Salaries for Civil Engineers start at $3,000 but easily go up to $8,000 once you show your ability and manage projects of your own.

Medical Roboticist

Robots are taking over the world, and I’m serious. Did you hear the recent news on Koufu’s “Smart Return Tray Robots”? Well, the fun news is robots could be operating on you in the near future. Four armed robot surgeries are picking up in the medical world. Of these four arms, three of them provide the maximum range of motion and precision while the fourth has a high definition camera to guide the surgeon through the procedure making sure there is no chance of error. A robot needs to be trained on knowledge of the human body, and there is no better person for that then a healthcare professional. Your job could be to teach robots how to complete their tasks! How fun does that sound? As this is a role that needs a high level of knowledge both on the medical and engineering side, you can expect a very handsome salary package if you fulfil all the requirements.

While Medical Robotic jobs aren’t widely available in Singapore at the moment, you can expect a pretty good salary when it reaches this side of the world.

Seedly is an everyday personal finance assistant that aggregates your financial data across up to 6 local bank and card accounts and gives you a complete personal financial picture. We currently serve over 6,000 users and growing in Singapore and are supported by NUS Enterprise, TOP 9 DBS HOTSPOT startup and East Ventures. We aim to become the #1 personal finance management app in Singapore and the region.

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About Jennifer Franslay
Growth Marketer with Seedly! I studied software for a little bit and decided to do finance instead. Weird jump, yeah.
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