How a Singapore product developer landed an AI strategy job at Standard Chartered bank

SINGAPORE – For much of Ms Shery Chan’s early career, she was a digital product designer in New Zealand. The 34-year-old spent a decade there designing digital platforms, ranging from a DIY brand’s loyalty programme to a peer-to-peer payments platform for a bank.

In 2022, she moved back to Singapore to set up the digital consultancy’s first office in Asia. Two years later, she moved on to SC Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Standard Chartered Bank, where she evaluated the viability of new business ventures.

Neither of these jobs required deep technical or engineering skills in IT.

“The last time I coded was probably when I was in polytechnic,” she recounted, saying she had dabbled only in “tiny bits” of older web-development technologies JavaScript and ActionScript then.

Yet, Ms Chan was able to pivot from her product development background to drive bankwide artificial intelligence (AI) implementation, moving from the Standard Chartered subsidiary to the parent company to fill a gap in a talent-scarce space.

The catalyst that nudged her career in a new direction was vibe coding – the practice of using natural language to command AI tools to write software, allowing non-technical users to build applications rapidly.

Ms Chan is part of a new breed of workers that the Government is hoping to cultivate – those who combine deep professional expertise in their own domains with fluency in AI. Dubbed AI bilinguals, they are familiar with how to direct AI systems and how to integrate AI capabilities into their work.

The two-day prototype

One key recommendation put forward in the midterm report of Singapore’s Economic Strategy Review is

a national AI workforce strategy

that will help workers build AI literacy and fluency, so they can thrive in the coming work environment where AI is pervasive.

Ms Chan first gained working knowledge in using AI in June 2025, when she took part in a two-day vibe coding workshop called Code with AI. The bootcamp was run by start-up founders Sherry Jiang and Agrim Singh, who had used such tools in their businesses.

“I started with Supabase, v0 and Cursor during Code with AI,” said Ms Chan, referring to tools that let users build software quickly with AI assistance, without needing deep coding expertise.

While hobbyists would use vibe coding for fun projects like mini games or fun dashboards, Ms Chan used it at SC Ventures to build a prototype for a financial crime detection investigation and management platform.

The AI platform sought to centralise alerts about suspicious transactions from multiple sources such as internal alerts on suspicious patterns, Interpol notices and information from watchlist and sanctions databases. It would then prioritise which alerts to respond to and why. There were different interfaces for anti-money laundering analysts, compliance officers and auditors.

Ms Chan spent two days prompt-engineering the prototype – crafting and refining instructions to steer the AI towards useful outputs. In the process, she also created synthetic data to mimic real-world fraud patterns, allowing the prototype to be demonstrated without using real customer data.

With the prototype in hand, she was able to better engage various stakeholders on the project.

“Instead of abstract conversations about ‘what AI could do’, I was able to show them. Product people clicked through it. Tech teams examined the data structure. Risk department colleagues checked if the logic made sense. The discussions and processes shifted from theoretical to tactical. It enabled the team to discuss implementation details instead of debating feasibility,” said Ms Chan.

Through this exercise, she also got hands-on experience with how AI systems worked, gaining a better understanding of their strengths, limitations and how to apply them.

“The real skill isn’t coding itself – it’s about knowing what’s possible,” she said.

Landing a bigger role

It was indeed Ms Chan’s ability to meld commercial awareness with technical execution that caught the attention of Mr David Hardoon, Standard Chartered’s global head of AI enablement.

His team, set up in April 2025, is responsible for strengthening the bank’s AI capabilities and governance, identifying opportunities where AI can add value and enhance client experiences.

Ms Chan had initially set up a casual 30-minute coffee meeting in September 2025 with Mr Hardoon to discuss how the bank’s ventures arm could collaborate better with his AI enablement team.

Fifteen minutes into the conversation, as she talked about the thinking process behind the financial crime prototype, Mr Hardoon realised he was speaking to a talent hard to come by, who would be a good fit for the team he was trying to build.

Mr Hardoon said AI-related skills were not the key things he was looking for. Instead he was looking for dexterity in navigating both tech implementation and business priorities, underpinned by a strong foundation in the finance or technology sector.

Ms Chan had “the ability to prototype and build rapidly, which enriched her existing knowledge of software development and know-how in navigating business decisions”, he said.

After further rounds of interviews, Ms Chan landed the job as director for AI product strategy and adoption in Standard Chartered in October 2025.

Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo had said

previously that AI bilinguals will be highly valued

, as they will be “pathfinders and pace-setters for meaningful AI adoption everywhere”.

Ms Chan’s job now involves evaluating a wide range of potential use cases across the bank in Singapore, from business units such as corporate investment banking to wealth retail. She also works on metrics to be tracked on a monthly basis, to ensure the bank is seeing its returns on investment in AI.

Mr Hardoon’s advice to those looking to transition into AI-related roles is that while technical skills or knowledge of technical processes are helpful in opening doors to such roles, it is important that people continue to lean into their prior expertise beyond the AI space.

“AI-related roles and essential skills that invite success must be interconnected with other focus areas, whether it is business management, cybersecurity, engineering or communications,” he said.

“Rather than obtaining the same AI certifications as everyone else, I believe that those who engage thoroughly with their domain expertise and identify a niche angle in which they can augment AI enablement will be able to be a valuable addition to the team.”

Ms Chan’s advice is to start experimenting. “Just start building things, even messy ones,” she said.

“I’m here because my design background taught me to focus on ecosystems and understanding what people are trying to accomplish – not because I could code.”