Twitter expands Asia Pacific engineering centre to bolster global capabilities

Photo credit: Twitter

Twitter announced today that it will be expanding its engineering centre in Singapore, where the company’s Asia Pacific headquarters is located, by doubling the number of engineers to over 100 staff in 2023. In partnership with the Digital Industry Singapore (DISG), this R&D investment in Twitter’s rapidly growing regional business furthers its commitment to bolstering its global engineering capabilities, and improve service availability and reliability for people who use Twitter around the world.

Based in Singapore and working on global initiatives for Twitter, the technical hires include roles in engineering, data science, machine learning and product management. Together with dedicated engineering teams around the world, the team will focus on core advancements to Twitter such as developing new product experiences, surfacing more personalised content for the people who use Twitter, and will drive platform efficiencies to increase speed and reliability.

This Singapore-based engineering hub, sited within Twitter’s main regional office, was set up in February 2020 and is led by Silvanus Lee (@silvanus_lee). Silvanus is a returning Singaporean who spent more than a decade in San Francisco, scaling global engineering teams at organisations such as Uber and Dropbox, before joining Twitter nearly two years ago.

“At Twitter, our purpose is to serve the public conversation. We are focused on product innovations and improvements, so that people around the world can have the best experience when they want to find out what’s happening, discuss a trending topic, or connect with their communities. Following the success of the centre’s establishment where we built high-quality teams and strengthened our technical capabilities in areas such as machine learning, we are focused on continuing to attract and retain world-class talent. With the distinguished tech ecosystem in Singapore, I am confident that we will be able to raise the bar on the craft of engineering, and drive global impact for Twitter.”

Silvanus Lee

Director, Asia Pacific Engineering Centre

Twitter

“Asia Pacific remains a steadfast growth engine for our company, for which Singapore has been an important regional hub. This fast-growing engineering centre demonstrates our determination to constantly better our service for people, customers and our partners in this region. We’re excited to welcome many more bright engineers to the Twitter flock, united in our common purpose to serve the public conversation together.”

Yu Sasamoto

Vice President of Asia Pacific and Japan

Twitter

“Twitter’s expansion of its engineering centre speaks to the company’s confidence in Singapore’s vibrant tech ecosystem for innovation, as well as the partnership we’ve built up over the years. This will create new job opportunities for Singapore and give Singaporeans the chance to work on new and exciting technologies destined for global markets, with colleagues from all around the world.”

Ang Chin Tah

Senior Vice President, DISG

EDB

The expansion of Twitter’s engineering hubs outside of the US also accelerates its commitment to building a truly global, inclusive, and accessible product by creating a more distributed workforce. Offering more choice and flexibility, such as the ability to work in the Asia Pacific region, enables a greater talent mix for the company that reflects the communities it serves.

With the aim of becoming the world's most diverse, inclusive, and accessible tech company, Twitter has set new diversity goals for 2025, where at least half of its global employees will be women. Additionally, inclusive work practices like asynchronous productivity were adopted to level the playing field for employees across all locations and time zones.

While working from home has gained popularity because of the pandemic, the Asia Pacific headquarters will be undergoing an office expansion to meet the needs of its growing number of employees, and to support employees with better flexibility and choice in where and how they work.

In 2021, Twitter announced a year-long partnership with the Government of Singapore. The collaboration focuses on upskilling Singapore’s workforce, promoting digital literacy and internet safety, and supporting the Government’s COVID-19 communications on Twitter. As part of this partnership, Twitter launched several professional development opportunities tailored for those looking to break into the technology sector. These include the following three programmes:

● Twitter Career Roadshow @ SkillsFuture Month: more than 300 people attended the Roadshow, connecting directly with Twitter employees to network and seek technical advice on how to transition into the technology sector.

● Twitter Flight School: in partnership with institutes for higher learning and government agencies, Twitter Flight School, an online learning platform, was launched for those looking to learn about Twitter and advertising on the service.

● #DevelopHER: a two-day virtual immersion programme introducing around 40 female computer science or engineering students to Twitter’s engineering work in the region. The programme included coding challenges, technical workshops, and mentorship sessions with Twitter’s engineers.

Go to careers.twitter.com to see a wide range of open roles available for Twitter in Singapore today.