Research Assistant (Urban Intelligence & Policy Analyst)

Interested applicants are invited to apply directly at the NUS Career Portal. Please note your application will only be processed if you apply via NUS Career Portal.

NUS Career Portal link: https://careers.nus.edu.sg/job/Research-Assistant-%28Urban-Intelligence-&-Policy-Analyst%29/33289-en_GB/

We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Job Description

NUS Cities is a university-wide, interdisciplinary entity hosted within the College of Design and Engineering, serving as an open and inclusive collaborative platform spanning Education, Research, and Advisory Services.

This role focuses primarily on the urban planning, qualitative research, and policy translation components of NUS Cities' ongoing projects, helping ensure that research outputs are grounded in real-world planning contexts and communicated effectively to planning practitioners and policymakers. The Research Analyst will also contribute to academic publications, helping advance and disseminate knowledge to the broader research community.

Key Responsibilities

• Support the integration of technical outputs with urban planning and policy context, ensuring insights align with real-world governance needs and planning workflows.
• Support the policy translation process — helping operationalise research outputs into formats suitable for decision-makers (e.g., slides, briefs, memos, workshop materials, and presentation narratives).
• Contribute to documentation, visualisations, and the writing of reports and publications, with a strong focus on clarity, structure, and readability for both policymakers and academic audiences.
• Support other NUS Cities research and analysis activities, including contributing to engagements, knowledge products, and deliverables that connect research insights with practitioner and policy audiences.
• Support qualitative research activities, such as synthesising practitioner needs, summarising stakeholder feedback, drafting case studies, and translating technical outputs into clear planning narratives.
• Assist in designing and validating use cases for the technical framework (e.g., built environment and residents' well-being analysis; estate management and operational efficiency), with emphasis on framing, interpretation, and real-world relevance.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Urban Planning, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Geography, Urban Studies, or a closely related field.
• Strong organisation and project coordination skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams, timelines, and stakeholder touchpoints.
• Excellent writing and presentation skills, including the ability to produce clear, well-structured slides, briefs, summaries, and stakeholder-facing materials.
• Resourceful and analytical, with good communication skills; able to work independently while collaborating effectively with interdisciplinary teams of planners, social scientists, and technical researchers.
• Keen interest in working with AI tools and prompt engineering to support research, synthesis, and knowledge production workflows.

Preferred
• Familiarity with Singapore's urban governance landscape (e.g., URA, HDB, BCA, LTA, MND) is a strong advantage.
• Demonstrated experience in qualitative research and synthesis (e.g., interviews, thematic analysis, sensemaking, narrative development, stakeholder needs analysis).
• Familiarity with geospatial tools (e.g., QGIS/ArcGIS/GeoPandas) and/or data analysis in Python.

Application Procedure

Interested applicants should submit a dossier consisting of the following to the NUS career portal:

• A cover letter (maximum 3 pages)
• Up-to-date CV
• A statement describing their research trajectory, interests and career ambitions
• Contact details for three referees. Only short-listed applicants will be invited to submit reference letters.

We will begin evaluating candidates immediately, but the position will remain open until a suitable candidate is found. Further enquiries should be sent to [email protected] (please indicate “Research Assistant (Urban Intelligence & Policy Analyst) Application” as the subject heading).