DBS eyes hiring 100 developers to boost its digitalisation

It unveiled Hack2Hire to identify successful candidates.

DBS announced its plans to hire 100 developers skilled in emerging and disruptive technologies as it cements its position as a leading digital bank.

With this, it will be unveiling a coding challenge and hackathon where successful candidates will eventually be offered to join DBS's developers. The bank is the first bank in Southeast Asia to do such recruitment drive. Fresh graduates and experienced professionals can take part in the hackathon.

DBS Head of Core Systems Technology Soh Siew said the group is seeing rapid advancements in banking technology using cloud, machine learning and Big Data, which are paving the way for a new world of seamless banking.

"We want to bring developers well-versed in these new technologies into the bank to accelerate our digital transformation efforts. We believe that recruiting via a hackathon is an innovative and effective way to attract the right talent,” she said.

Hack2Hire, which will be conducted in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, and Pivotal, consists of two parts - an online assessment challenge to gauge the programming and technical capabilities of candidates, followed by a live two-day hackathon session, where their approach to problem-solving will be put to the test. Shortlisted candidates from the second round will be offered full-time roles at DBS.

Over the last five years, DBS has made significant investments in strategic technology initiatives to weave banking into the everyday life of its customers so that they can spend more time on people or things that they care about. This includes initiating a comprehensive re-architecture of the bank’s technology as well as catalysing a change in culture within the bank to one that is more “fintech-like” in nature.

DBS launched digibank, India’s first mobile-only bank, last year and has plans to introduce this groundbreaking service in other markets. It was also the first bank to be recognised as the “World’s Best Digital Bank” by prestigious financial magazine Euromoney in 2016. 

(Photo from DBS press release)