DBS to fill tech roles in women-focused career fair

Singapore’s DBS Bank is looking for more women to join its ranks with over 140 openings at its Women in Tech virtual career fair for female technologists this year.

This is triple the number of opportunities available at last year’s inaugural fair, which saw more than 500 applicants vie for 50 job opportunities.

The new hires will fill positions in five engineering roles, including engineering leads, solution architects, ReactJS developers, full stack developers, as well as software development engineers in test.

Soh Siew Choo, DBS’s group head of big data/artificial intelligence and consumer banking technology, said the bank is making a concerted push to improve female representation in engineering roles, a space which continues to see a dearth of women across the industry.

“We believe that by driving diversity in our engineering roles we will be able to incorporate a multiplicity of views and perspectives upstream so as to deliver outstanding digital experiences for our customers,” she added.

Soh said the overwhelming response to the first edition of DBS’s women-focused career fair has shattered the myth that there is a limited pipeline of women for technology roles.

“The key to success lies in applying an unbiased lens and targeted effort in our outreach. At DBS, we run curated hackathons and hiring events to reach out to top female technology talent. We are deeply encouraged by the positive outcomes of our efforts,” she said.

Lo Man Ling, vice-president of consumer banking digital platform at DBS, joined the bank through last year’s run of DBS Women in Tech after more than nine years in the public sector.

“I was sold on DBS’s unique and sincere effort to connect with female technologists such as myself. Not only did I meet with many talented ladies in the bank's technology and engineering teams, I also saw a community that truly believes in the importance and strength of diversity,” Lo said.

Applicants will go through an 80-minute online assessment tailored to the roles they are applying for to gauge their technical and planning capabilities. These online assessments must be submitted by 8 June 2021.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online hiring day on 12 June 2021, when they will learn more about the bank’s approach to fostering diversity and inclusion in its workforce as well as the career development pathways available before attending a virtual interview.

DBS has been organising events to bring more women technologists into its ranks. In 2019, the bank launched Hack2Hire-Her, an outreach programme targeting female technology talent to complement the bank’s annual Hack2Hire hackathon.

As a result, the proportion of applications from women rose to over 30%, as compared to 5% in previous years, and the number of offers made to women also increased about five times.

DBS’s efforts to drive gender equality has been recognised for four consecutive years in Bloomberg’s Gender equality index. This year, DBS was the only ASEAN company to be listed in the index’s top global quartile.