Singtel's NCS seeks to hire up to 200 fresh graduates this year
The hires will come from different educational backgrounds, and not just solely those with artificial intelligence (AI) expertise, Ng added.
In an exclusive interview with The Business Times during the company's flagship Impact Forum held on Jul 10, Ng reiterated that the hiring strategy is in line with NCS' talent development pipeline, which aims to develop tech graduates with a ground-up approach.
'This is not like soccer, where you buy the best striker, best midfielder, the best goalkeeper,' Ng added, emphasising that the technological services industry performs more like a team sport.
Development backed by strong financial earnings
Ng believes that NCS' rising revenue will enable it to continue hiring at a stable rate, citing the NCS CEO Review for FY 2025, which showed revenue grew 5 per cent from a year ago to S$2.98 billion.
Parent Singtel's group revenue came in at S$14.1 billion for FY2025.
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NCS' 39 per cent growth in annual earnings before interest and tax is the fastest to date, added the report. The sharp increase was attributed to improved delivery margins and effective cost management.
On Jul 10, NCS pledged to invest S$130 million over the next three years to further develop AI across the Asia-Pacific region. Part of the investment will be used to train its employees to be AI-enabled.
'If we don't train our people, how can we do good work for our clients?' said Ng.
With subpar work, it is impossible for NCS to expand beyond Singapore, and we can forget about being in the 'top league', he remarked.
However, Ng acknowledged that NCS ends up being a 'poaching ground' for IT talent in the market, meaning that its employees often tend to go to their competitors.
'You can't stop people from leaving,' he said. But NCS still strives to keep its best talent.
'Some of the talents that leave will join our competitors, but some will also become our clients,' Ng said. 'We have played a part in building the industry.'
Expanding regionally
Ng seeks to grow the NCS presence beyond the Republic across different countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
In March, NCS expanded into the Philippines through a joint venture with Globe Telecom. It said that this will add 1,200 technology professionals to its workforce.
'We want to be very clear that we want to be a Pan-Apac player,' Ng said, noting that other technology services companies focus on the North-America and Europe market, and are not dominant players in Apac.
Ng added that in South-east Asia, NCS is in the midst of both the 'Western stack' and 'Chinese stack', meaning that clients in this region will have options to utilise different AI models from different regions such as the US and China.
'I believe there will be a diversity of AI in South-east Asia, and that will bring a lot of opportunities to everybody,' he said.
When asked about the rising geopolitical tension, particularly the impact of US President Donald Trump's widespread tariffs, Ng is optimistic that NCS will remain strong.
He noted that as a technology services provider, NCS is not directly affected by increasing tariffs – although there might be an indirect impact on some of its products that include hardware which might be hit by the tariffs.
'That shouldn't stop companies like (NCS) from being able to tap onto the growing demands of AI, growing demands of tech,' he added.
Ng remains confident that as long as the companies and economies are growing, then NCS will be 'okay'.
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