BBC
Principal Software Engineer
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JOB DETAILS
Job Band: D
Contract: Permanent
Location: London, Newcastle, Salford, Glasgow, Cardiff – Hybrid (1 day per week in the office)
Department: BBC Media Tech - Graphics and Automation Software Engineering
Proposed Salary: up to £83,790 depending on relevant skills, knowledge, and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
We're happy to discuss flexible working. If you'd like to, please indicate your preference in the application – though there's no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at the offer stage.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
Join the BBC’s Graphics & Automation team as a Principal Software Engineer, shaping the systems and services that power the BBC’s real-time and post-production graphics for News, Sport, iPlayer, Sounds, Streams, and more, as well as studio and gallery automation systems that drive hundreds of hours of live output every day. You will lead technical direction across the software development team, ensuring graphics scenes can be hosted, managed, and controlled at scale both on-premises and in the cloud, and play a key role in evolving the platforms that deliver the BBC’s iconic brand across daily live broadcasts, large-scale events, and social media.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM
You’ll be working at the heart of a brilliant team with a passion for broadcast and graphics, at a time where we’re delivering huge value to the BBC by transitioning the graphics estate to an in-house HTML-based solution, GSAAS (Graphics Scenes As A Service). The team is spread across the country and offers plenty of opportunity to visit our studios and galleries as we integrate our software with automation solutions and newsroom systems. We also support operators in key large-scale events such as elections, where our graphics systems deal with the ingest of data and the control of driving data-driven graphics to air.
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Your Key Responsibilities And Impact
- Provide technical leadership across the Graphics & Automation team
- Shape architecture and guide long-term technical direction across Graphics & Automation
- Drive engineering excellence, including observability, reliability, and operational practices
- Collaborate with Product, Engineering, and Architecture to align technical and product priorities
Essential Criteria
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
- Strong experience writing front-end applications using React + TypeScript, microservices with Node.js + TypeScript, or back-end applications with Java
- Experience using or integrating with one or more broadcast graphics systems such as Viz Artist / Viz Engine, Ross XPression, or CasparCG
- Experience using or integrating with one or more studio automation systems such as Sofie, Viz Mosart, or Ross Overdrive
- Experience building broadcast graphics with HTML and CSS
- Experience using Kubernetes and managing deployments of services on Kubernetes clusters using Helm
Desirable
- Experience influencing technical direction and engineering practices across development teams
- Proven ability to collaborate across teams and influence both technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Experience building broadcast graphics with HTML and CSS
- Experience of CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions
- Experience of deploying to the cloud, particularly EKS
If you can bring some of these skills and experiences, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply.
Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment 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.
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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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