There are many top end R&D facilities here in SG that need specialist engineers, but too bad our education system only churns out low end generic engineers. That's why you see so many foreign elite engineers here on super high expat packages.

The problem is not about lack of pay in engineering jobs in SG, but more like there are these high paying engineering jobs here that are not filled by locals because most of our local engineer do have the bare minimum skill sets to take them up.

There's way too many generic civil, EEE, mechanical, IT & bioscience engineers here who are competing on the low level market with the cheap Indian/China/Pinoy/Myanmar FTs.

My company recently engage headhunter to try & recruit a local turbine design engineer with 5-7 years experience, budget was set at S$180-200k. Despite many months recruiting, all we got from local CVs were garbage with general mechanical/electrical engineer experience who were either unemployed or drawing 50-70k. In the end we had to transfer a German guy here on a super expensive expat package.