BBC
Lead AI Engineer
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JOB DETAILS
JOB BAND: E
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-time
DEPARTMENT: BBC Media Technology
LOCATION: Salford
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £80,000 - £90,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge, and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
The Lead AI Engineer (Gen AI) will help the BBC make practical use of AI tools and systems to solve business problems and help our internal teams work effectively and efficiently.
The role will collaborate closely with project managers, data scientists, analysts, domain experts, and the BBC's technical teams to build the data pipelines and technical solutions that enable AI projects to move effectively through piloting to successful handover to the business for scaling.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM
These roles will sit within BBC Media Technology and be embedded within the BBC’s Strategy and Transformation team, focusing on Gen AI transformation.
The Generative AI Team helps the BBC realise value from rapidly evolving AI capabilities in a way that is practical, responsible, and aligned to the BBC’s public service mission. The team’s activities include enabling adoption of AI tools across the organisation; leading innovation and transformation work; and leading the BBC's engagement on the wider AI issues that shape our operating environment.
The work we do makes the most of AI to deliver value for the BBC’s teams and audiences. The challenges are new and exciting, and you'll have real influence over how one of the world's most trusted public broadcasters adopts AI in a way that is practical, responsible, and true to its values.
Your Key Responsibilities And Impact
- Develop secure, reliable, and well-designed solutions that support high-quality AI piloting and transition to successful handover to the business for scaling.
- Design and build robust data pipelines, models, and supporting data structures that enable AI projects to move effectively from piloting to successful handover into the business for scaling.
- Work closely with data scientists, analysts, project managers, business partners, researchers, and designers to understand requirements and translate them into valuable solutions.
- Establish and promote strong engineering practices for data quality, resilience, maintainability, and operational performance across the team’s work.
- Help shape data approaches to architecture, integration, and pilot design, ensuring solutions are appropriate for AI experimentation and future scaling.
- Provide technical leadership to other engineers, mentoring, code review, and setting standards, contributing to a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
- Ensure data used within AI projects is managed in line with the BBC’s organisational values, security requirements, and responsible approach to AI.
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Your Skills And Experience
Essential criteria
- Significant experience of designing and delivering LLM-based workflows or applications, including pipelines, models, and platform components, with the engineering discipline to build secure, resilient, and maintainable systems in complex organisational environments.
- Strong engineering practices including proficiency in Python and demonstrable use of AI-assisted development tools to improve code quality and delivery pace.
- Significant hands-on experience with:
- Cloud platforms and infrastructure (AWS preferred) – including Infrastructure as Code;
- Container and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes);
- API development frameworks (FastAPI or equivalent);
- Experience of working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, translating a range of user, product, and research needs into practical engineering solutions.
- Demonstrable experience of providing technical leadership to other engineers, mentoring, reviewing code, setting standards, and improving engineering practices.
Desirable criteria
- Good understanding of data governance, security, and quality considerations, with the judgement to apply these appropriately in innovative or experimental contexts.
- Experience working in broadcast, media, start-up, or research environments.
- Contributions to published technical documents or thought leadership in your area of expertise.
- Experience building with Generative AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, PydanticAI) and managed AI services (e.g., Bedrock, Azure).
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Disclaimer
This job description is a written statement of the essential characteristics of the job, with its principal accountabilities, incorporating a note of the skills, knowledge, and experience required for a satisfactory level of performance. This is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.
Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.
Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Recruitment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.
For any general queries, please contact: bbchr@bbc.co.uk
We are unable to accept applications via CV and only applications made online will be considered. Please click on the APPLY NOW button to proceed with your application.
Redeployment
The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.
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