Principal Software Engineer

BBC; Salford; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 87,000; Full time

Job summary

BBC is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the optimisation and evolution of our data lake and data warehouse platforms, enabling scalable data services across the organisation.

You will partner with architects and product leaders to define long-term technical vision, implement cloud architectures with IaC (AWS CDK/CloudFormation), and run CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline and Jenkins, while championing security, tests and reliability.

Qualifications

• Extensive DevOps/DataOps experience with data lake/warehouse scaling.
• Experience securing data warehouses in cloud environments.
• Proficiency with AWS services (S3, EC2, Lambda, DynamoDB, Athena, VPC).
• Strong IaC and CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead optimisation and evolution of the data lake and data warehouse platforms.
• Support data access for analysis and personalization.
• Shape long-term technical vision with architects and stakeholders.
• Design and manage IaC with AWS CDK/CloudFormation; CI/CD pipelines.
• Promote TDD, test automation, and security practices.
• Mentor engineers and foster cross-team collaboration.

Skills

DevOps/DataOps

Data warehouse Redshift

AWS cloud architecture

CI/CD pipelines

AWS CDK

CloudFormation

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

Python

Security DevSecOps

Grafana CloudWatch

Tools

AWS CDK

CloudFormation

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

Python

Grafana

Job description

JOB DETAILS

JOB ID: 51337

JOB TITLE: Principal Software Engineer

CONTRACT TYPE: Perm

DEPARTMENT: BBC Media Tech, Platforms

LOCATION: London / Salford / Glasgow - Hybrid working

PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £80,000 - £87,000 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 offer stage.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

Step into the world of the BBC, one of the UK's most iconic and trusted brands, where technology plays a critical role in delivering content to millions of people every day. Our Software Engineering teams build and operate innovative products and platforms that help keep the BBC at the forefront of the industry.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

Core Data Platform is part of Data Platform, providing trusted, fast, and reliable access to audience and business data that enables a more data-informed and personalised BBC.

We support personalised experiences across BBC products, including iPlayer and Sounds, while providing a platform used by 140+ weekly active users across our data community, including analysts, scientists, and engineers. This role offers the opportunity to work with data at scale and build highly scalable data platforms and ingestion pipelines.

Your Key Responsibilities And Impact

• Lead the optimisation, performance, and evolution of the organisation's data lake and data warehouse platforms, ensuring scalable, cost-effective data services while enabling future architectural improvements and modernisation initiatives.
• Support and enhance the platforms and services that underpin audience personalisation and data access across the organisation, enabling stakeholders to efficiently query, analyse, and consume data while maintaining the performance, reliability, and operational support of business-critical services.
• Partner with architects, product leaders, and stakeholders to shape the long-term technical vision, technical goals and system architecture, support architectural decisions for scalable and maintainable systems.
• Guide the use of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) practices with AWS CDK and CloudFormation to provision and manage secure and maintainable cloud environments. Design and support CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, Jenkins, and other tools, with an emphasis on reliability, reusability, and performance. Contribute to the design and integration of monitoring and observability solutions (CloudWatch, Grafana) to ensure infrastructure and Warehouse health.
• Champion software engineering excellence through Test-Driven Development (TDD), rigorous test automation, and continuous quality assurance practices across team and wider department.
• Cultivate a high-performing engineering culture through mentorship, knowledge sharing, and thought leadership via deep dives, brown bags, internal tech talks, and cross-team collaboration, advocate for security best practices across the software development lifecycle using AWS-native tools and DevSecOps principles.

Essential

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Extensive experience in DevOps/DataOps roles with demonstrated impact in building, scaling, including progressive delivery strategies, resilience engineering, and performance optimisation. and securing Data warehouse such as Redshift infrastructure in cloud-native environments.
• Expertise with databases(Database:, DynamoDB, Redis, Aurora, Athena), and Strong experience with AWS services such as S3, EC2, SQS, Lambda, IAM, Managed Airflow, Athena etc, VPC, with a strong command of cloud solution architecture.
• Advanced proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code practices using AWS CDK, CloudFormation with CI/CD best practices with hands-on expertise in GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and GitOps workflows.
• Deep understanding of cloud security, governance, and compliance, with the ability to define and implement scalable security frameworks with a track record designing and developing software with scale, security and reliability in mind.
• Extensive experience in at least one of the programming languages such as Python.

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.

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: [e-mail]

Redeployment

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC and they will be given priority consideration ahead of the 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.