Software Engineer

BBC; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 53,000 - 58,000; Full time

Job summary

BBC is hiring for a Software Engineer in London to join the Media Distribution Analytics team. You will design and build data products to understand media distribution, maintain a petabyte-scale data lake and ETL, and develop a real-time stream processing pipeline for operational monitoring.

You will collaborate with stakeholders and engineers to shape data products, ensuring they deliver value and scale for BBC streaming experiences.

Qualifications

• Production experience with a programming language used in data engineering (e.g., Python, SQL, or Java).
• Strong understanding of databases and data lake/data modelling tools.
• Hands-on experience with batch or streaming data pipelines; knowledge of Spark, Kafka, or Flink.

Responsibilities

• Design and build data products to understand media distribution within the BBC.
• Maintain and extend a petabyte-scale data lake and ETL process.
• Develop real-time stream processing pipeline for operational monitoring.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and engineers to identify requirements and ensure impact.
• Contribute to a culture of engineering excellence.

Skills

Python

SQL

Java

Databases

Spark

Kafka

Flink

Cloud services

3rd party data providers

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Flink

AWS

GCP

Azure

Looker

Grafana

PowerBI

Job description

JOB DETAILS

JOB BAND: C

CONTRACT TYPE: 12 Month Fixed Term Contract, Full-time

DEPARTMENT: Digital Distribution

LOCATION: London Broadcasting House - 2 Days a week in office Hybrid

PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £52,500 - £57,500 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

Media Distribution Analytics is the team that knows what your streaming experience was while watching the World Cup on iPlayer or listening to your favourite podcast on BBC Sounds. The BBC's future is dependent on delivering content to an ever-growing online audience and setting the industry standard for a world-class on-demand and live streaming experience. That means playing content back flawlessly and offering the best quality media to our audience, so that we continue to deliver news, entertainment and the UK's most prestigious live events that delight our audiences.

To achieve these goals the Media Distribution Analytics team develop the data products and pipelines that ingest, measure and visualise the audience experience and allow us to take action, often in real-time, in addition to informing long term capacity requirements and performance. This is a data engineering team that processes enormous quantities of data, and works closely with device playback and the BBC's own Content Distribution Network team (BIDI), as well as third party network suppliers, to help make the online streaming experience the best it can possibly be.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

Joining the Media Distribution Analytics team as a software engineer is a chance to work on high-impact, real-time data systems that improve how millions experience BBC content. You'll collaborate with a team of experienced engineers, build scalable data pipelines, and contribute to cutting-edge streaming analytics - a unique opportunity to shape the future of online media distribution at the BBC.

Your Key Responsibilities And Impact

• Design and build data products to understand media distribution within the BBC.
• Maintain and extend a petabyte-scale data lake and ETL process.
• Develop our real-time stream processing pipeline used for operational monitoring.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and engineers to find new requirements, ensure products are impactful and add value.
• Contribute to culture of engineering excellence

Essential Criteria

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Production experience using a programming language commonly used in data engineering- such as Python, SQL, or Java, and openness to learning others
• Strong understanding of the fundamentals of databases- whether relational, object storage, or data warehouses and knowledge of the state of the art in modern datalake and data modelling tools
• Hands-on experience with batch or streaming data pipelines and are keen to deepen your knowledge of tools like Spark, Kafka, or Flink.
• Production experience with cloud services (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure)
• Experience working with 3rd party data providers, expressing requirements and driving improvement in their service

Desirable

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and its use to deploy Data Products at scale
• You love working with data and building data products that help shape user experiences.
• Experience in working with data visualization tools (such as Looker, Grafana, or PowerBI) to communicate insights from data
• Enjoy collaborating in cross-functional teams and being comfortable asking questions, seeking feedback, and learning from others

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 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.