British cyber-security firm invests $1.2m to open office in S'pore

It will serve as Goldilock's Asia-Pacific headquarters; firm aims to hire about 20 engineers

- Zhaki Abdullah

British cyber-security firm Goldilock has invested $1.2 million to open an office in Singapore in July, and aims to hire about 20 engineers in the coming years.

The company has also received an additional $800,000 from the UK-Singapore Collaborative R&D fund by Britain's innovation agency Innovate UK and trade agency Enterprise Singapore. The two countries signed the UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement in 2022 to boost digital trade between them.

Goldilock will have five engineers—with additional support staff—in the first 1½ years of operation here, before expanding to 20 engineers over the next three years, its co-chief executive and co-founder Stephen Kines said on June 2.

The company will also look to reskill engineers in other fields, as it believes in bringing different perspectives to cyber security, he added.

"We're looking for engineers who can understand how to think differently about the network architecture and look at how Goldilock can be deployed in those different situations," Mr Kines said.

Goldilock's entry into Singapore comes as the Republic's cyber-security workforce has grown in recent years, tripling from 4,000 in 2016 to 12,000 in 2022.