Head of Operational Technology & Process Innovation

We are partnered with an established, large-scale enterprise in Singapore seeking an engineering-minded Head of Process Engineering & Automation Architecture to lead the technical modernisation of mission-critical frontline operations.

This mandate moves beyond theoretical strategy and slide decks. We are looking for a systems-level practitioner who approaches complex, high-throughput physical and digital operations with an engineering mindset. In this role, you will lead a multidisciplinary squad across process architecture, automation, robotics, and applied technologies to systematically diagnose latency, refactor legacy operational workflows, and deploy scalable, fault-tolerant solutions across high-volume environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end design and re-engineering of operational architectures, applying systems modeling, lean engineering, and modern automation to eliminate bottlenecks across high-volume frontline touchpoints.

• Direct and mentor a specialised technical team spanning process engineers, automation developers, robotics specialists, and applied technologists bridging physical operations with modern software and hardware platforms.

• Establish rigorous stage-gate governance and technical validation pipelines to eliminate pilot stagnation, ensuring rapid prototypes transition into robust, fully integrated, and observable production rollouts.

• Partner with property and regional operational leaders to instrument frontline processes, analyze real-time operational telemetry, and co-design tech-enabled automation workflows that directly lift operational throughput and guest experience.

• Implement standardized operational benchmarking, process observability metrics, and automated quality loops across distributed business units to ensure resilient, scalable execution.

Core Requirements

• 15 years of progressive leadership experience across process engineering, systems architecture, industrial/operations engineering, or tech-enabled enterprise transformation.

• Demonstrated track record leading cross-functional engineering and technical teams through end-to-end workflow design, automated systems deployment, and integration with legacy enterprise backbones.

• Solid functional grounding in applying modern automation toolchains, such as robotic automation (AGVs/AMRs/RPA), computer vision, event-driven workflows, IoT/sensor networks, or applied machine learning/AI to frontline operational challenges.

• Proven experience moving projects out of "sandbox purgatory" via disciplined stage-gate engineering, automated testing, and quantifiable reliability/throughput metrics.

• Strong commercial acumen and executive communication skills, with the ability to articulate technical tradeoffs, system architecture, and ROI clearly to non-technical operational and C-suite leadership.