Functional Lead (AIR Lab)

The Aviation Innovation Research (AIR) Lab

The joint CAAS-Thales innovation lab known as ‘AIR Lab’ started to operate on 1stNovember 2019 with the objective to develop Proof of Concepts (POCs) or Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) of advanced and open technologies for future Air Traffic Management (ATM). Currently, the joint lab employs a team of 30 Thales engineers and 5 CAAS engineers and air traffic controllers operating in avibrant ecosystem involving a number of Singaporean SMEs and start-ups, as well as key research institutes.

Thales engineers include 5 domain experts – with more than 10 years of experience –coming from Thales ATM centers of competence in France and Australia. The se experts are coaching both the local Thales and CAAS engineers. 

The POCs and MVPs are co-developed with the CAAS engineers who have access to the same development tools and environment used by the Thales Engineers (provided by the Singapore branch of Thales Digital Factory). The POCs and MVPs are defined in collaboration with CAAS air traffic controllers through iterative workshops.

AIRLab research outcomes will feed the next generation of products, including clearly disruptive outcomes addressing Safety and Security for Open architecture, data driven ATM Twin, Trajectory Based Operations and a Regional Collaboration Platform. 

AIRLab continues to benefit from research conducted in Europe through new architecture research which, among other objectives, aims at meeting much stricter safety standards for ground ATM systems in development by the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). This breakthrough architecture study is co-funded by the French government (CASSIOPEA).

Whom We Are Looking For

As a Functional Lead, you own the day-to-day delivery of a specific product functionality within an AIR Lab squad. You act as the primary point of coordination between the team and the broader engineering and product organisation, ensuring that your functionality is well-understood, well-designed, and consistently delivered to the required quality standards.

We are looking for an engineer who combines technical rigor with strong organisational skills and a genuine appetite for mentoring. You are comfortable taking ownership of a well-scoped domain and making it run smoothly— not by doing everything yourself, but by creating the conditions in which the team can operate effectively and independently.

You bring enough technical depth to contribute meaningfully to design discussions and code reviews, but your real strength is in structure: breaking down complexity, maintaining clarity on what needs to be done and why, and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. You thrive on helping teammates grow and are energised by the idea that the best measure of your success is a team that increasingly doesn’t need you for the basics.

You have likely worked in agile product teams and understand how good engineering practices — clear task definition, consistent review processes, solid DevOps foundations — make the difference between a team that ships and a team that struggles. Above all, you believe that quality and speed reinforce each other when ownership is clear and the team is well-supported.

Responsibilities:

•                    Support the CPO in writing and refining User Stories for a specific functionality, ensuring they are clearly expressed and actionable.

•                    Break down User Stories into tasks, lead their estimation with the team, and validate the Definition of Done for each completed task.

•                    Document and maintain the High Level Design for your functionality, keeping it up to date as the system evolves.

•                    Capture and document technical decisions as Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), in collaboration with the architect office.

•                    Organise and supervise merge request reviews within your functionality, ensuring they meet the squad’s quality standards.

•                    Define and supervise the DevOps pipelines supporting your functionality’s delivery, ensuring reliability and continuous improvement.

•                    Coordinate and document investigations into bugs and integration issues, bringing structured methods and mentoring the team for greater efficiency.

•                    Coordinate with other Functional Leads and relevant stakeholders to manage dependencies and maintain technical alignment across the squad.

•                    Organise and actively participate in knowledge-sharing sessions, fostering a culture of continuous learning within the team.

•                    Ensure technical debt is managed as part of delivery planning.

•                    Be involved in any technical decision that could impact the delivery of your functionality, and escalate cross-cutting concerns to the architect office as needed.

Requirements:

Education

•                    Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field

•                    Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, if applicable

Essential Skills/Experience

•                    Solid hands-on software engineering experience, with a track record of delivering features end-to-end in an agile team environment

•                    Experience breaking down complex requirements into well-defined tasks and leading their estimation within a development team

•                    Comfort with technical documentation: design documents, ADRs, and the discipline to keep them current as systems evolve

•                    Practical understanding of code review processes and the ability to set and uphold quality standards without becoming a bottleneck

•                    Familiarity with DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines — enough to define, evolve, and supervise the delivery pipeline for your functionality

•                    Strong organisational and communication skills, with the ability to coordinate across team members and other functional areas

•                    A structured approach to problem-solving, especially when investigating bugs or integration issues under pressure

•                    Genuine appetite for mentoring and knowledge-sharing — you find satisfaction in helping teammates grow and in reducing your team’s dependency on individual heroes

Desirable Skills/Experience

•                    Experience in an R&D or innovation lab environment, where requirements evolve rapidly and delivering working software under uncertainty is the norm

•                    Familiarity with cloud-native architectures and platforms (e.g. Kubernetes, containerisation, event-driven systems) at a level sufficient to participate in meaningful design discussions

•                    Background in regulated or safety-critical domains — understanding what quality and traceability requirements look like in practice when the stakes are high

•                    Experience with Air Traffic Management (ATM)systems or other complex, safety-critical operational environments

•                    Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development practices — using LLMs to accelerate prototyping, documentation, or test coverage — and the judgment to apply them responsibly

•                    Familiarity with agile ceremonies and the Scrum framework, with enough experience to contribute constructively to sprint planning, refinement, and retrospectives

•                    Prior experience in a coordination or technical lead role — as a senior developer, team lead, or similar — where you were responsible for more than your own output

Essential Traits

•                    Ownership mindset: you take accountability for your functionality’s quality and progress without waiting to be asked, and you follow through on what you commit to

•                    Clarity and rigour: you document things properly, keep design artifacts up to date, and believe that good structure today saves pain tomorrow

•                    Team multiplier: you actively delegate, share knowledge, and train others — your goal is a team that grows in capability, not one that depends on you for every decision

•                    Collaborative by default: you coordinate naturally across boundaries — within your squad, with other Functional Leads, and with the architect office — without needing formal processes to make it happen

•                    Pragmatic and structured: you bring method to ambiguous situations — whether that’s a difficult bug, a stalled design decision, or a dependency that’s blocking delivery — and you help the team move forward without drama

•            Intellectually honest: you surface blockers early, flag risks transparently, and don’t over-promise to buy time or avoid difficult conversations