Principal Software Engineer - Mobile Cloud

Principal Software Engineer - Mobile Cloud

Job description

Package Description

Salary range : £61,200 - £91,800

Contract type : permanent

Location : BBC site

Our comprehensive benefits package includes :

- An employer pension contribution of up to 10%
- 26 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.

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 with the job reference in the subject.

Job Introduction

The BBC Mobile Group is at the forefront of the new platform lead engineering approach across the BBC, and is key to accelerating our development across all of the BBC’s mobile apps and games.

As the BBC moves mobile client teams closer together, and begins building common features across multiple apps, we also need to build robust supporting services and platforms to accompany them.

As a Principal Cloud Engineer for the Mobile Group,





you will have the opportunity to lead the technical direction of cloud computing technologies and their supporting role for our native mobile apps and services.

You will have a keen drive for engineering excellence to guide our architecture and technical strategy across the Mobile Group, whilst keeping up to date with industry advancements to drive real change for our mobile apps.

Whilst initially focused on CI / tooling enhancements for our mobile teams, you’ll then be able to shape the direction of our Backend For Frontend (BFF) strategy for our apps and work with our existing teams in this space.

To be successful in this role you will need an excellent understanding of object-oriented programming, clean architecture, and test-driven development.

Our backend services run on AWS at the BBC,





so a deep experience with this platform is essential. Additionally, you will be building tooling and CI systems to aid our mobile engineers, so you’ll need an understanding of the whole mobile app delivery process, as well as experience launching and maintaining AWS tools and services specific to code building.

We are a small, self-organising and highly collaborative team of engineers, testers, UX designers, technical architects and product owners.

We value our engineers, offering regular training and development opportunities, as well as 10% time’ - allowing dedicated time for self-improvement, learning and innovation.

We take the time to reflect and improve on how we’re working via team retrospectives and mentoring. We’re a hard-working team who are supportive, care about each other,





and promote a healthy work-life balance with opportunities for flexible working hours and a friendly working environment.

Responsible for the design, implementation and operation of effective software and tools, and sharing specialist knowledge in specific business and technology domains

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities

As a Principal Software Engineer for cloud technologies, you will be responsible for the development of tooling to help accelerate all our mobile engineering teams.

Working across multiple teams, you’ll need to gather technical requirements from a wide range of stakeholders with various ways of working, distilling these into one common strategy and rolling the solution out to all engineering teams.

Technical Leadership







- Playing a key role in the technical direction of Mobile Engineering
- Advocate new technologies and approaches to ensure our products are industry leading
- Providing domain expertise for cloud technologies across the mobile teams
- Ensuring a high standard of engineering excellence within our products

Delivery

- Work with cross discipline partners to plan and commit to quarterly deliverables
- Work with stakeholders across the Mobile Engineering to align with goals and mission
- Delivering features using agile development practices
- Seeking out new tools and methodologies to evolve our development processes

People

- Key role in directing technical strategy for multidisciplinary teams
- Assisting with recruiting and onboarding new team members






- Mentoring and developing team members and peers to help them to reach their potential
- Help to foster a collaborative and inclusive culture across Mobile Engineering
- Lead the design and development of effective software that meets strategic business needs for immediate team and broader BBC.
- Ensure alignment of the team’s products and services with BBC technology and architecture strategy.
- Provide knowledge and best practice to the broader BBC in areas of specialist knowledge.
- Ensure the team’s approach to testing is fit for purpose.
- Lead integration of the software with monitoring and support tools.
- Provide technical knowledge, insight and leadership to peers and colleagues.






- Review and give constructive feedback on others’ code.
- Support product and departmental managers in communicating strategy and product fit and effectiveness to stakeholders at all levels.
- Ensure the team’s software works well in its operating environment.
- Be an expert on the BBC’s operating environments who team members can consult. Play a part in shaping those operating environments.
- Ensure that the team’s technical product documentation is always complete, accurate and coherent.
- Lead troubleshooting and resolution of issues throughout the product life cycle including out of hours support for incident resolution.
- Work with other technical leaders in the broader organisation to define, document and distribute best practice and standards.






- Lead and encourage continuous improvement of the team’s delivery and development processes.
- Participate in the team’s software development methodologies such as pairing, code and documentation reviewing, and continuous delivery.
- Work with project, product and technical leads to design software and create implementable specifications and tasks at product and roadmap level.
- Work with third party providers where necessary providing direction, support and documentation.
- Learn new technologies and keep abreast of existing technologies and help introduce them where appropriate.

Knowledge, Skills, Training & Experience

Essential

- Experience designing and writing software for large scale applications in a fast changing environment with rapid release cycles.
- Expertise in multiple mainstream development frameworks.
- Expertise in business domains, relevant to the BBC.
- Expertise with mainstream development and deployment tool chains (IDE, SCCS, CI).
- Expertise in database design and use in software applications.
- Experience of open source practices.
- Expertise in web architecture and key technologies (HTTP, DNS, distributed design).
- Expertise in test driven development and broader testing and QA concerns.
- Leadership experience of project working and professional software development processes, including agile.
- Expertise in choosing and applying design patterns.
- Leadership and collaboration inside and beyond the team. The ability to influence diverse and senior stakeholders effectively.
- Takes responsibility for driving products and system to success.Desirable
- Computer science degree.
- Recruitment, management and mentoring experience.
- Experience of supporting, modifying and maintaining systems and code developed by others.
- Experience engaging with industry forums, interest groups or blogging and other broader industry forums.

Are you the right candidate?

- Strong AWS experience, with knowledge of Android and iOS apps
- Can lead, coach and mentor engineers
- Experience with Continuous Integration / Deployment in mobile apps
- Ability to rapidly acquire new software skills and to work with new technologies
- Be able to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues at all levels in an organisation

▶️ Principal Software Engineer - Mobile Cloud
🖊️ BBC
📍 Great Britain