Asia Pacific · Singapore
Singapore
Asia-Pacific headquarters of choice, with strong regulation, weak talent supply and high costs.
- Hub score
- 84
- Cost of living
- 121
- Median rent
- $2,950
- Internet speed
- 312 Mbps
Composite of talent, capital, output
100 = US national average
Per month
Singapore is chosen for its regulatory clarity, tax treatment and regional access rather than its talent depth. Most companies staff leadership and commercial roles locally while placing engineering elsewhere in the region.
Strengths
- Regulatory and legal predictability
- Regional hub connectivity
- Favourable corporate tax treatment
- Strong fintech and crypto policy clarity
Watch-outs
- Shallow senior engineering market
- Employment pass quotas favour local hiring
- Housing costs among the highest in Asia
- Population
- 6.0M
- Timezone
- UTC+8
- Currency
- SGD
- Talent pool
- 125,000 technology workers
- Visa note
- Employment Pass thresholds rise annually; local hiring ratios are actively enforced.
Compensation
What tech roles pay in Singapore
Median base salary by role, adjusted for the Singapore market.
| Role | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | $125k | $159k |
| Product Manager | $123k | $156k |
| Data Scientist | $116k | $143k |
| Data Engineer | $120k | $150k |
| Analytics Engineer | $101k | $125k |
| Machine Learning Engineer | $154k | $196k |
| Product Designer | $102k | $128k |
| UX Researcher | $95k | $119k |
| DevOps Engineer | $124k | $156k |
| Security Engineer | $138k | $173k |
| Engineering Manager | $164k | $204k |
| Technical Program Manager | $129k | $162k |
| Account Executive | $74k | $95k |
| Customer Success Manager | $67k | $86k |
Employers
Notable companies in Singapore
Stripe
Payments infrastructure for internet businesses, from startups to global enterprises.
Datadog
Observability platform spanning infrastructure monitoring, APM, logs and security.
Databricks
Data and AI platform built on the lakehouse architecture and open table formats.
Canva
Visual design platform aimed at non-designers, scaled into enterprise brand management.
Cloudflare
Global edge network combining performance, security and developer compute.
HubSpot
Customer platform bundling CRM, marketing, sales and service for mid-market companies.
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