Software Engineering Manager

Band: E
Contract: Permanent, Full-time
Department: Digital Distribution – Media Services
Location: London or Salford (preferred), or Glasgow, Cardiff, Newcastle, or Birmingham, with regular travel to London/Salford as part of hybrid working
Salary: £110,000–£130,000 depending on skills and experience

We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. If you wish, you can outline your preference when you apply, but there's no obligation at this stage.

The BBC aims to be as strong in engineering as we are in content. Our digital products underpin our mission to inform, educate and entertain millions of people every day, and we're looking for a Software Engineering Manager who can blend hands-on technical expertise with confident people leadership.

This is a unique opportunity for an experienced engineering leader who still enjoys engaging with technical decision-making. You will lead several multi-disciplinary teams who design, build and operate the BBC's cloud-based media platform — ensuring it is scalable, resilient and ready for the BBC's digital future.

You will develop and own the technical strategy for Media Services, working closely with product, architecture and operations partners. This is a role where your technical judgement and your leadership will have a tangible impact on the BBC's audience-facing products.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

Media Services sits at the heart of BBC Digital Distribution, powering iPlayer, BBC Sounds, News and Sport. Our systems handle more than 50 million daily plays and process thousands of hours of content every single day.

You'll work with modern cloud technologies, a DevOps culture and teams who care deeply about engineering quality and continuous improvement. It's an opportunity to help build products and services that truly matter — at a scale few organisations can match.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT

•    Lead and support several engineering teams delivering high-volume, high-availability media publishing workflows and consumer-facing services using AWS and modern frameworks.

•    Provide clear technical leadership, helping teams make thoughtful architectural and engineering decisions.

•    Recruit, mentor and develop engineering talent, creating an inclusive, collaborative and high-performing environment.

•    Shape and deliver the technical vision and strategy for Media Services in partnership with colleagues across Technology, Product Group and Media Operations.

•    Ensure our systems meet high standards of reliability, security and operational excellence.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

•    Experience leading multiple engineering teams in an Agile environment, ideally with platform or infrastructure exposure.

•    A strong track record delivering complex, cloud-based solutions at scale (AWS preferable).

•    The ability to provide hands-on technical direction — whether through architecture, code review, prototyping or guiding engineering approaches.

•    Confident stakeholder management and the ability to influence across product, architecture and delivery teams.

•    Experience line-managing senior engineers and/or team leads and supporting their career development.

DESIRABLE CRITERIA

•    Familiarity with CI/CD and configuration tools such as AWS CodePipeline, GitHub Actions, Terraform, CloudFormation or Ansible.

•    Experience with large-scale media platforms (VOD or live streaming).

•    Knowledge of threat-modelling frameworks or zero-trust approaches.

•    Experience with event-driven architectures and RESTful API design.

•    A passion for improving developer experience, tooling and engineering craft.

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.