Software Engineering Manager

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BAND: E
DEPARTMENT: Product Engineering & Data, Enablement Dev Operations
SALARY: £110,000-£119,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-Time
LOCATION: Newcastle or Salford - Hybrid

We're happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The BBC Dev Operations function is looking to appoint a Software Engineering Manager to play a key leadership role responsible for driving automation, platform reliability, operational visibility, and security across the BBC Product Group.

This new role will establish a multidisciplinary team supporting platforms and federated engineering teams, ensuring that digital products are robust, scalable, and cost-effective. By building and maintaining automation, observability, and CI/CD pipelines, and by championing best practices in reliability engineering, the team enables faster, safer software delivery and rapid incident response.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT

• Lead and Develop a High-Performing DevOps Engineers - recruit and manage a multidisciplinary team responsible for Automation, Observability/Monitoring, Security & Compliance Automation, CI/CD Pipeline, Reliability/Resilience, FinOps, Root Cause/Incident Response, Dashboarding/Reporting and 24/7 Runbook & On-Call Coordinators.
• Drive Platform Automation and Operational Excellence - own and evolve automation strategies, tooling, and processes that increase deployment velocity, reliability, and consistency across centralised and federated engineering teams.
• Champion Reliability Engineering and Incident Response - build and embed best practices in site reliability engineering, including proactive monitoring, incident detection, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement to minimise downtime and user impact.
• Enhance Observability and Operational Visibility - oversee the design, implementation, and evolution of monitoring, alerting, dashboarding, and reporting capabilities that provide actionable insights and enable rapid response to issues.
• Embed Security, Compliance, and Cost Management - ensure security and compliance are integral to all DevOps practices. Collaborate with relevant teams to automate compliance checks and manage cloud/platform costs effectively through FinOps practices.
• Drive Collaboration Across Engineering Teams - work closely with both platform teams and product teams to support diverse delivery models, promote knowledge sharing, and ensure alignment on reliability and operational standards.
• Support 24/7 Runbook and On-Call Operations - oversee the creation and maintenance of runbooks and on-call processes, ensuring robust support for live services and effective handover between teams.
• Contribute to Strategic SRE Evolution - play a key role in shaping the long-term approach to SRE within the BBC Product Group, including the potential organisational design and the evolution of team structure and responsibilities.
• Promote a Culture of Continuous Improvement - foster an environment of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement, championing automation, resilience, and operational excellence at scale.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL

• Proven experience leading DevOps and/or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) teams in large-scale, complex digital or technology environments.
• Deep expertise in automation, CI/CD pipeline design and operation, and modern infrastructure management (cloud-native, containerisation, infrastructure-as-code).
• Strong background in implementing and evolving observability, monitoring, and incident response practices to drive high reliability and rapid recovery.
• Demonstrated experience embedding security and compliance controls into DevOps workflows and managing platform or cloud costs (FinOps).
• Track record of collaborating across centralised and federated teams, bridging technical and non-technical stakeholders to deliver shared operational goals.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills, including mentoring multidisciplinary engineering teams and driving cultural change.

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.

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.

Information at a Glance This is your BBC

At the BBC you can create and innovate in an inclusive environment while contributing to some of the world's best loved content, and the BBC's mission to inform, educate and entertain.

Find out more about the BBC Life at BBC

Here you will benefit from:

• Fair pay and flexible benefits including a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week, 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pensionscheme and discounted dental, health care and gym.
• Excellent career and professional development.
• Support in your working life, including flexible working which you can discuss with us at any point during the application, selection or offer.
• A values-based organisation where the way we do things is important as what we do.

Benefits may vary if you are joining on an FTC basis.

Learn more about life at the BBC and our values in our candidate pack.

Candidate pack You belong

We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, so all our employees feel that they can belong, thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to join us. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief.

Find out more about diversity, inclusion and belonging in our strategy below.

Diversity, inclusion & belonging strategy Disability confident

We are a disability confident employer. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process, or to carry out this role, please contact us via email and we'd be happy to discuss:

BBC Group and Public Services, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom, W1A 1AA. BBC Studios Distribution Limited, company no: , registered address: 1 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, United Kingdom W12 7FA.