Job Introduction

In BBC Home you’ll help build the next generation of the BBC online. Your work will be in front of tens of millions of people as we deliver world-class experiences via the BBC Homepage and use our Topics capability to power some of the BBC’s biggest products in News, Sport and programmes like Strictly Come Dancing or Dr Who.  You’ll be involved in the work we’re doing to make BBC online a more participatory experience.

Our vision is to bring together everything the BBC produces in a personalised way, through connected services that allow you to interact directly with the BBC.  By joining our team you will be given the opportunity to make a real difference to our mission to reinvent the BBC online for a new generation.

Our agile teams are made up of software engineers, testers, user experience designers, design researchers, product owners, business analysts and project managers, all striving to create extraordinary experiences for our audiences.

Learning, developing and sparking curiosity is part our culture, so you will be joining a team who really care about you, the development of your technical skills, your career aspirations and your contribution to our great team culture.

How we work

In BBC Home we build our products following Continuous Delivery practises on AWS with a strong focus on Node.JS and React. Builds run with fully automated pipelines, deploying to live multiple times a day.

We build fully responsive web solutions across multiple devices using HTML5, CSS and Javascript and we create the backend services that drive them using Node.JS and AWS cloud technologies. Our services are highly available and highly scalable so we build following service-oriented architecture and micro-service architectural patterns.

We follow agile development methodologies and practice Test Driven Development, Behaviour Driven Development and advocate pair programming. 

We focus on the key non-functional requirements that are important to our audience - performance, security and accessibility. We excel at collaboration and often we work closely with other teams in the BBC - and external companies - to push our capabilities further. 

Role Responsibility

What we’re looking for

This role is within our Data Capabilities team, which has a focus on building and delivering new backend services for audience facing products to use like the BBC Homepage and Topics.

• We build and maintain the Programmes API, a JSON API to get BBC programmes data such as information about brands, series, episodes and clips.
• We build and maintain MQL, which is a lightweight, generic approach to query BBC content metadata allowing us to create more dynamic web and app experiences, especially relevant for personalisation features.
• We are also responsible to maintain the /programmes website and database in production.

In the coming months, we will be building on top of these products, adding reacher features, exploring new capabilities and experimenting how we can use the vast amount of data that BBC disposes to power more dynamic and personalised experiences for end users. In the team, we are not only implementing features to these APIs, but we also manage the infrastructure, monitoring, maintainance, performance and security required to run these services in production. We are using Node.JS and many different AWS services, with a preference for serverless when possible, that we compose together to build our products. Some of the technologies we use include CDK, Lambda, OpenSearch, EventBridge, SQS, CodeBuild & CodePipeline, API Gateway, AppSync, Cloudwatch…

As a Senior Software Engineer you will be expected to take a lead in the design and implementation of software applications, ensure on time delivery of robust, industry leading solutions.

You’ll have a strong background in software development and in depth knowledge of design principles and patterns.

You’ll drive engineering best practices within your team - helping implement and ensure we follow good practices such as CI/CD, TDD, infrastructure as code, cloud architectures and pair/mob programming.

You’ll have some experience of mentoring junior team members and be committed to helping with their development.

You’ll love learning new technologies and are able to evaluate them and apply these to a variety of projects.

You’ll have a positive attitude and a willingness to learn.  You’ll promote your skills, share your knowledge and contribute to the evolution of best practices throughout the department and the BBC.

The Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate for this role will:

• Actively encourage pairing and working collaboratively with the team
• Have strong development skills and experience building applications (ideally in Node.JS and using AWS technologies)
• Have experience of test driven development, with both unit and integration tests
• Have experience of infrastructure as code and devops practices
• Have experience of working in an agile team
• Mentor and support peers, actively advocating for best practices

Package Description

Band: D
Contract type: Permanent
Location: Glasgow,

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression â€“ the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities â€“ our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits- We offer a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

The situation regarding the coronavirus outbreak is developing quickly and the BBC is keen to continue to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people across the BBC, while continuing to protect our services. To reduce the risk access to BBC buildings is limited to those essential to our broadcast output. From Wednesday 18th March until further notice all assessments and interviews will be conducted remotely. For more information go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/careers/

Mae’r sefyllfa gyda’r coronafeirws yn datblygu’n gyflym, ac mae’r BBC yn awyddus i barhau i sicrhau diogelwch a lles pobl ar draws y BBC, gan barhau i warchod ein gwasanaethau hefyd. I leihau’r risg, dim ond y bobl sy’n hanfodol i’n hallbwn darlledu fydd yn cael mynediad i adeiladau’r BBC. O ddydd Mercher 18fed Mawrth ymlaen, bydd pob asesiad a chyfweliad yn cael ei gynnal o bell, nes rhoddir gwybod yn wahanol. I gael mwy o wybodaeth, ewch i https://www.bbc.co.uk/careers/

About the Company

We don't focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you've read about our values and behaviors in the document attached below.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that's to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity. 

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, social background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.