Senior Software Engineer

Package Description

Band: D £55,000 - £65,000 per annum dependent on experience
Contract type: permanent
Location: Salford (hybrid working – 2 days in office per week)

Our comprehensive benefits package includes:

‚ An employer pension contribution of up to 10%
‚ 25 days’ annual leave (based on full time hours) + bank holidays and the option to buy/sell additional days
‚ Contributory lifestyle benefit options including discounts at hundreds of retailers, cycle to work scheme, discounted gym memberships and healthcare schemes
‚ Employee assistance and well-being programmes
‚ Learning and development tailored to your role this could include industry recognised qualifications, coaching and mentoring
‚ An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join staff networks including: Women’s Network, National Disability Networks and many more

Family friendly flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid working, job sharing, flexi-time and compressed hours can be requested, and fulfilled on a case by case basis suitable for the team being hired for.

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and especially welcome individuals from underrepresented groups.

If you require any reasonable adjustments at any time, please let us know by contacting us on [email protected].

Job Introduction

Partner Engineering is focused on getting BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds and Connected Bridge for TV working on partner devices from major international manufacturers.

We work closely with companies such as Amazon, Sony, PlayStation, LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sky, Virgin Media, Vestel, YouView and many more; enabling amazing experiences for our audiences on as many platforms as possible. Our team's principle concern is to assist and deliver certification of platforms for BBC connected TV applications.

Step into the world of the BBC, one of the UK's most iconic and beloved brands, where every working day is as unique as it is rewarding. Every tick of the clock, our content reaches millions of people globally, which is made possible by our top-notch Software Engineering team. They've been instrumental in pioneering innovative products and unique features that have firmly positioned us at the forefront of our industry. We don't merely adapt to an ever-changing world - we set the pace.

We are growing our engineering hub of excellence and looking for a Senior Software Engineer with demonstrable experience to join our Partner Engineering team in Salford.

We are looking for engineers that don’t mind which tool set/language they need to use to deliver solutions. Our current estate involves a variety of languages and technologies

Our mission is to provide automated certification tools, by building technologies that validate the latest specifications, whilst engaging with our partners to deliver the highest quality experiences for our audiences. The devices we certify enable millions of people to access our products on a daily basis, and our success is critical to the success of the iPlayer for TV mission. We use Node, Javascript, AWS, cloud formation, and Github on a daily basis. We work in a range of other programming languages specific to diagnosing device issues.

We're in the business of building world class innovative tooling to validate and regulate TV certification based on our own high standards and specifications.

Our tools need to be well engineered, well maintained, easy to use, easy to understand, and provide sufficient information to help diagnose and fix faults.

We offer a warm welcome with full support settling in and foster a culture where everyone has an opportunity to succeed. We're deeply proud of our values, which are intrinsic to the way we behave every day. We take them seriously because we want our culture to thrive. We want people to really enjoy working with us and get a buzz from knowing that what they are doing is making a difference and enhancing people's lives.

Our engineers receive 10% development time built into the 35 hour working week. We want to give you the time and space to stay fresh in the ever-changing technology landscape.

Come work on fantastically high-scale systems with us!

SDD24

Main Responsibilities

Software engineers at the BBC are more than just programmers – we’re people who are builders, designers, and problem solvers at heart, people with a passion to make things better for our audiences. You will help innovate and design new features and products, work with the team to build them, and support and grow them after they’re live.

As a developer in our teams, you will ensure high quality code is delivered in line with project goals and delivery cycles. You will thrive using agile methods and enjoy working collaboratively and as part of a multidisciplinary team focused on several projects.

You will be a hands-on developer with experience taking ownership of projects, code, database architecture and scalability.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll be responsible for the design of software, and for implementation and operation of effective software and tools. You'll collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to understand business requirements and influence product requirements.

You will work with principal engineers and team leaders and help mentor juniors in the team, promoting technical standards. Pairing on all aspects of the development process, you will deliver secure, reliable and scalable software within your team.

There’s a lot of scope for widening your skills in this role because it allows you to move into different areas, cover lots of ground and really broaden your understanding of how the business works.

Your day will be exciting and diverse. You won’t only ship code; you’ll be intimately involved with all stages of developing the product, predominately focusing on the backend.

Some practices we like:

‚ Pair-programming. We like knowledge sharing and learning from one another
‚ Shipping great products, not just writing superb code
‚ Hybrid work environment. We balance working from home with in-person collaboration.
‚ Global view. We work with peers in different geo-locations
‚ Mentoring and coaching. We care about each other
‚ Tapping into our creativity and learning. You get 10% development time every week to invest in your own learning and development
‚ Continuous deployment
‚ Working in an Agile environment with strong attention to a well-documented code, unit testing and continuous integration
‚ Pragmatism and obsession for simplicity, efficiency and performance

Are you the right candidate?

We are looking for software engineers who are passionate about code, curious and eager to learn in a team of engineering excellence.

If you loving writing top quality code but don't want to stop there because you’re also looking for ways to optimise and improve both structure and design, then the BBC might be for you!

Some of the programming language skills we are hiring for include:

‚ Strong back-end web development skills, particularly with Node
‚ Working knowledge of JavaScript and TypeScript. Software development engineering best practices, TDD, CI/CD

Some of the things we love:

‚ Experience with the end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC), including requirements gathering, design, development, testing, deployment and maintenance
‚ Developing on cloud based environments like AWS
‚ Solid understanding of software development principles, design patterns and best practices
‚ Experience in feature engineering, data pre-processing, data pipelines
‚ Experience building ranked retrieval algorithms to support end users querying for data
‚ Practical experience of writing ranking functions in custom engines or frameworks like Elasticsearch, Solr, or Lemur/Indri; or recommended algorithms
‚ Experience of Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as CDK, CloudFormation
‚ Knowledge of writing automated tests and taking a TDD approach to your work
‚ An aspiration for engineering excellence, using knowledge sharing to learn from each other
‚ Experience in TV application software development and/or certification/testing processes

The selection process

The interview process will consist of the below:

1) Live pair programming exercise with two of our software engineers which you get in advance of your interview date
2) Blended interview questions with two of our software engineers
3) Seen task whereby you’re given a brief in advance of your interview which you’ll then be asked a series of questions on

2) and 3) is conducted in one interview session 1) is conducted in a separate session.

We aim to make our recruitment process a snapshot into our culture and what it's like to work here.

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons 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.

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 behaviours here.

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, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons 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.

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 behaviours 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, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.