Academic Positions, Operational TechnologyCybersecurity

My client a university invites applications for Academic Staff positions in Operational Technology (OT) Cybersecurity. They are building a distinctive capability at the intersection of cybersecurity, engineering systems, critical infrastructure, and applied learning. They welcome outstanding candidates whocan help the university to strengthen its capability in OT cybersecurity, especially colleagues who can work with real engineering systems, brownfield environments, cyber-physical operations, and industry partners. Appointment maybe made at a rank aligned with experience and profile.

Academic staff positions in the university comprise both faculty and professional officers. They play distinctive yet complementary roles in advancing the mission in education and applied research. Faculty provide academic leadership in the design, delivery, and continual enhancement of programmes, ensuring academic rigour and industry relevance, while professional officers, as technical specialists, embed current and emerging industry practices and support practice-oriented delivery. Together, they strengthen the university’s applied learning environment through hands-on, real-world approaches that enhance students' industry readiness.

Ina pplied research, faculty lead translational research and innovation in collaboration with industry, bridging knowledge creation with practical application, while professional officers contribute deep technical expertise and industry experience to translate concepts into implementation, prototyping and deployment, thereby ensuring impactful and industry-relevant outcomes.

The institution is Singapore's first University of Applied Learning and the University for Industry. Their students learn in authentic environments, work on real problems with external partners, and undertake substantial workplace learning through the integrated work study programme. Their approach to education is explicitly competency-based, with a focus on demonstrated capability, workplace relevance, and flexible pathways for learners.

The campus is a testbed for the systems around which this role is built. The campus runs on Singapore's first Multi-Energy Microgrid (MEMG), which is the largest microgrid in Singapore and the first MEMG on a university campus in Southeast Asia. The MEMG was built and operated with SP Group, integrating solar PV, thermal, and distributed energy resources into a live, sandbox-grade environment for energy transition research. The campus also houses the Energy Efficiency Technology Centre (EETC), established with the National Environment Agency, whose Energy Efficiency Training Facility is a first-of-its-kindintegrated industrial systems plant in Singapore — giving staff and students aworking industrial process environment for development, applied research, and hands-on training. Alongside these, the Centre for Intelligent Robotics at the digital district, together with the AI Centre with NVIDIA, gives staff and students authentic cyber-physical environments in which to develop, integrate, and stress-test new technologies under realistic operating conditions.

In parallel, the university works closely with the maritime ecosystem on decarbonisation and digitalisation. Through its Future Ship and System Design Programme and partnerships with DNV's Maritime Decarbonisation & Autonomy Regional Centre of Excellence, Seatrium's Offshore & Marine DigitalLearning Lab, RINA, and MPA-linked initiatives, the university engages directly with shipowners, yards, classification societies, and regulators on zero-emission and autonomous vessels, shore charging and future-fuel bunkering, digital twins, and AI-enabled remote operations.

Taken together, these platforms, the deep industry partnership network across the energy and maritime sectors and next-generation AI and robotics use cases, provide an exciting ecosystem of real assets, operators, and operational problems to which security, resilience, and safe-operation research can be applied, tested, and translated into practice.

This search prioritises practitioners. They are looking, first and foremost, for candidates with substantial, hands-on experience defending real-world industrial environments as asset owners, operators, integrators, consultants,or responders, who can bring that operational experience, engineering constraints and sector-relevant problems into the classroom and the lab.

The university welcome accomplished academics, but the strongest candidates will have spent significant time on plant floors, in control rooms, and inside live OT networks and environments. Candidates should be able to translate that field experience into rigorous, hands-on teaching, authentic learning experiences,and useful, industry-relevant outcomes.

They are interested in the security, resilience, and safe operation of real-world industrial systems, particularly in the maritime and energy sectors, including secure applications of robotics and AI in these operational environments where critical systems must continue to operate safely under degraded or contested conditions, and cyber decisions have physical, operational, and safety consequences. The relevant areas include:

• Secure deployment and brownfield hardening of OT systems already in live operation
• Safe modernisation, segmentation, remote access, and control integration in industrial or infrastructure environments
• OT testing, experimentation, and validation environments that reflect real production constraints
• OT incident response, resilience, degraded operations, and safe recovery
• OT asset discovery, dependency mapping, criticality analysis, and operational risk visibility
• Security of cyber-physical systems, controllers (e.g., PLCs, RTUs, HMIs, DCS, IEDs, power converters and charging systems), embedded devices, industrial protocols (e.g., Modbus, CAN, DNP3, OPC-UA, EtherNet/IP, PROFINET, BACnet), and industrial control networks
• Consequence-aware security analysis for complex OT systems-of-systems

Key responsibilities

You will contribute to the university’s mission through a combination of teaching, curriculum development, applied scholarship, and external engagement in OT cybersecurity.

Depending on rank and profile, responsibilities may include:

• Teaching undergraduate, postgraduate, and continuing education learners
• Designing modules,labs, case-based learning, and authentic assessments
• Developing hands-on OT cybersecurity learning environments, training assets, scenarios, and exercises
• Supervising capstone projects, industry-linked projects, and graduate students where appropriate
• Contributing to programme development across pre-employment and continuing education offerings
• Developing relevant and durable institutional OT cybersecurity capabilities for Singapore's local ecosystem, including industry, infrastructure operators, and the broader workforce
• Delivering impact through projects and partnerships with industry, government, infrastructure operators, engineering organisations, and professional communities
• Contributing to interdisciplinary initiatives across engineering, cybersecurity, computing, AI, safety, and applied systems domains
• Providing thought leadership towards shaping local practice, policy input and advisory roles

At the university, strong teaching means building learning experiences that are hands-on, rigorous, and close to practice. In OT cybersecurity, this may include secure architecture and deployment exercises, brownfield hardening projects, industrial protocol analysis, controller and embedded-system security labs, OT visibility and asset discovery activities, incident responsesimulations, resilience and recovery exercises, or projects shaped by real operational, safety, and engineering constraints. Their educational model values authenticity, workplace relevance, and the ability to assess whether learners can perform, not only whether they can recall.

You should be able to contribute to curriculum design, develop modern teaching materials, mentor students well, and work with colleagues to improve programmes over time. Experience with applied learning, competency-based education, workplace learning, engineering education, or industry-based training will be valuable.

Candidates will be able to leverage the university’s campus, laboratories, and industry partnerships to create realistic learning and experimentation platforms where secure engineering systems, production-informed validation, and operational resilience can be taught, tested, and translated. The strongest candidates will connect technical cybersecurity depth with operational and domain relevance, and work across engineering, cybersecurity, safety, operations, and management domains.

The university values scholarship that moves beyond publication alone. They areinterested in research and scholarly work that can be tested, translated,adopted, or used to solve real problems.

In OT cybersecurity, this may take different forms: applied research withinfrastructure operators or engineering partners; translational work that leads to methods, tools, datasets, validation approaches, or deployable capabilities; practice-based scholarship grounded in operational experience; sector-facing evaluations; or interdisciplinary work that brings cybersecurity into real systems and real environments.

Relevant themes may include secure brownfield modernisation, OT systems-of-systems validation, resilience and recovery under cyber disruption, safe use of operational data, dependency and criticality mapping, engineering-informed risk assessment, and consequence-aware incident response. The strongest candidates will show a clear line of sight between their expertise and tangible extern alvalue.

Requirements

The university welcome applications from candidates with strong academic, applied, or practice-oriented profiles.

The candidate should have:

• Doctorate or a Master'sdegree, with substantial and credible industry achievement, in engineering, cybersecurity, computer engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, control systems, systems engineering, industrial automation, information security, or a closely related field, or an equivalent combination of industry standing, recognised OT/ICS certification, and substantial, credible operational achievement
• Expertise in one or more OT cybersecurity domains relevant to this search, backed by substantial hands-on experience in real industrial or infrastructure environments
• A strong interest instudent learning and engagement, and keenness to adopt flipped classroom methods, team-based learning, and authentic assessments for learning
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset
• Interest in working across disciplines and with external partners
• Experience in real-world engineering, industrial, infrastructure, government, or operational technology environments
• Operational knowledge and experience with brownfield OT systems and processes, industrial control systems, building systems, utilities, manufacturing systems, transport systems,energy systems, or other cyber-physical environments
• Practical understanding of OT architecture, industrial protocols, controllers, embedded systems, remoteaccess, segmentation, monitoring, or lifecycle constraints, familiarity withframeworks such as IEC 62443, NIST SP 800-82, NERC CIP, IACS UR E26/27, and the SANS ICS Five Critical Controls.
• Experience in OT incident response, resilience planning, recovery, safety-critical operations,or operational risk management
• Professional certifications or recognised practice credentials relevant to cybersecurity, OT security, industrial systems, engineering safety, or infrastructure operations,such as GICSP, GRID, GCIP, GIAC, CISSP, or ISA/IEC 62443 credentials
• For candidates at the levels of Associate Professor / Professor, the ability to lead programmes, mentor colleagues, build external partnerships, and help shape institutional capability

ApplicationSubmission

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. All applications must be sent to ***email_hidden*** with the following materials:

• Cover letter
• Curriculum vitae
• Research, scholarship,or applied practice statement
• Teaching statement

By submitting any application or resume to us, you will be deemed to have agreed and consented to us disclosing your personal information to prospective employers for their consideration.

We regret to inform that only short-listed applicants will be notified.

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