The BBC has engaged an executive search firm, iO, to manage the selection process for this role. Please be aware that your application will be managed by iO, who will have access to your CV and personal details for the purpose of this vacancy only.
Should you want any further information about the role, or to speak with someone, please contact Elise Zajac of iO at .
JOB DETAILS JOB BAND: F
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-Time
DEPARTMENT: Product Engineering
LOCATION: Flexible (any major UK BBC hub) with hybrid working
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: up to £150,000 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 The BBC's Product Engineering function is looking to appoint two Heads of Architecture to join BBC Product Group's architecture leadership team. The architecture team's mission is to drive the technical designs and approaches that allow the BBC's audience-facing digital products to rapidly grow and innovate in an efficient and scalable way.
The role advertised here is the Head of Architecture focused on Enablement. A second vacancy for a Head of Architecture focused on Data Platform and Account and Identity is also being advertised. Please apply individually for the role(s) which interest you.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM This is a chance to work at scale, to tackle complex architectural challenges, and to influence the journey from traditional broadcasting to a fully connected, on demand future. You'll join a supportive community of architects - working across disciplines to bring clarity, coherence, and innovation to everything we do.
YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT As Head of Architecture, you will define and support the delivery of the technical architecture in your area of responsibility. This includes both line management and setting overall strategy in a way that enables all engineering teams to work at scale and high efficiency.
This is a highly collaborative role. You will work closely with a wide range of engineering, product, and business leaders, and with multidisciplinary teams across the organisation. You will use your communication and influencing skills to explain how your technical strategy contributes to wider business objectives, backed up by a coherent approach for delivering the strategy. In this role you will be one of the most senior technologists at the BBC. You will play a critical role in the organisation's digital transformation. Do you have the passion and drive to help shape the BBC's digital future?
Your key day to day responsibilities will include:
- Being part of the Product Group Engineering Leadership team, helping to drive the overall technology strategy with your peers.
- Being part of one or multiple cross discipline leadership teams, collaborating with Engineering, Product, Delivery, Data, UX, and other disciplines to develop successful products that grow the BBC's online reach.
- Line managing, coaching and developing a team of talented architects, as well as supporting a wide range of engineering and product teams.
- Owning the technology landscape within your area, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement, and taking accountability for ensuring solutions are performant and sustainable.
- Playing a critical role in defining how to enable our platform strategy and engineering efficiency through capabilities that apply at all levels of our technical stack.
Area of Responsibility
In this role you will join three other Heads of Architecture to collectively own the architecture strategy and technical direction of the BBC's online products. Together this architecture leadership - which is part of the engineering leadership - must ensure architectural alignment across all teams. Within this, your initial focus will be the 'Enablement' area, which provides the tools and services to ensure the BBC creates dependable and secure digital solutions in an efficient and manageable way. As Head of Architecture for Enablement, your responsibilities will include:
- Creating platforms and services that allow over 1000 engineers to safely develop on the cloud in a collaborative and efficient way. This includes tools to develop a common business layer, and the means to dependable scale to handle high levels of network traffic.
- Architectural solutions for ensuring a robust operational approach, such as the ability to monitor and observe the whole technical estate.
- Leading architectural approaches for partnerships and outsourced solutions.
- Ensuring we follow the best engineering and architectural practices, with the right tools and techniques for everyone to understand and deliver the architecture strategy. As mentioned above, it is likely that your areas of focus will change over time, for example to support new programmes of work.
- Driving the strategic adoption of AI across the SDLC and wider architecture, establishing the platforms, tooling, and guardrails that enable teams to safely unlock productivity gains and new product capabilities.
You will be a line manager of 1 2 architects. This will likely grow over time.
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE The ideal candidate will evidence the following skills and experience:
- Significant experience as a technical architect (or similar role), including defining and delivering a technical vision and strategy, and designing scalable, reliable, and maintainable architectures.
- Proven digital leader, with gravitas to work effectively with senior colleagues as well as being able to inspire, motivate and drive change through a large engineering team.
- Ability to present to and influence C Level colleagues, creating great interpersonal relationships across the organisation.
- A team player who can coach, develop and mentor others in our engineering community, and provide leadership amongst your peers.
- Significant experience leading in a software development environment, including agile delivery at scale, and with an informed view of architectural and engineering best practice.
- Knowledge of a broad range of technology concepts such as cloud computing (e.g. AWS), micro service architectures, event driven architectures and data processing at scale. You will work with a range of specialist teams which may include machine learning, APIs and networking, and client applications (on web, mobile and TV).
- Approaches to standardisation and governance, such as to manage efficiency, security and legal compliance, in a way that balances standardisation with autonomy at scale.
- Strong organisational skills that enable you to work across multiple specialist teams to align architecture goals and drive change and adoption.
- Continued professional development both as a leader and technologist, including a deep understanding of industry trends (e.g. AI). You will be expected to proactively identify and leverage these trends to drive innovation. This includes staying ahead of emerging technologies, assessing their potential impact, and integrating relevant advancements into our architecture strategy to ensure we remain at the forefront of digital transformation.
Being a leader at the BBC means putting the organisation's interest, goals and values first, ahead of individual team or function needs. The characteristics of an enterprise leader are: Focuses on outcomes over activity, adapts quickly, and simplifies complexity. They balance short term actions with long term impact, take full accountability for actions and decision making, and prioritise capability development to create teams fit for the future.
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.
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.
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.
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