Software Engineer

BBC Group and Public Services; London; Remote; GBP 45,000 - 56,000; Full time

Job description

Software Engineer

Software Engineering

Fixed Term - Full Time

London, GB, 0

BBC PUBLIC SERVICE B'CAST

Job Closing Date: 25/03/2025

THE ROLE

Job Requisition: 20680
Band: C
Salary range: Up to £56,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
Contract type: 22-month fixed term contract
Location: Remote

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.

Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
Benefits - We offer a negotiable salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 25 days annual leave with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care and gym.

Job introduction

Corporate Digital & Applications (CDA) is a high-performing department that builds a wide array of internal applications to serve our talented BBC colleagues. We look after the BBC's intranet, internal mobile applications, public-facing corporate sites, and dozens of internal bespoke web applications. Almost every person in the BBC uses at least one of our systems every week, and our audience-facing sites receive millions of views from the public every month.

We’re looking for an experienced full-stack engineer to work on a vital web-based scheduling system called Allocate. Allocate is used by our BBC News and radio production colleagues to help them plan shift work, and increasingly by other teams too.

We are a very supportive team and have a genuine interest in helping our engineers grow. You’ll be encouraged to take regular personal development time to give you the space to learn something new and help you take the next step in your career.

Main responsibilities

As a backend leaning full-stack software engineer working on Allocate you’ll be helping to transform the Allocate system. This will involve mapping out key data flows, understanding database structures, documenting, and making pragmatic suggestions to improve the codebase.

You will have excellent communication to collaborate with a third-party engineering team developing Allocate.

You’ll be involved with a wide range of tasks, from untangling database relationships to optimise slow running SQL queries, updating the codebase to modern PHP versions and to establish and maintain coding standards.

Allocate is a mature system which uses vanilla PHP and extensive PHP experience is essential. Allocate also uses Microsoft SQL Server and jQuery, so familiarity with these technologies is desirable.

This role is ideal for an engineer looking to step up into a senior position in the future given a large part of the role involves leading development, reviewing code, setting standards, optimising code, organising and prioritising work.

There will no doubt be opportunities to contribute to other exciting projects in CDA, so some experience or a willingness to learn other technologies such as React, Node.js and AWS is a bonus.

Are you the right candidate

Essential
• Excellent PHP skills
• Excellent experience designing and optimising relational database systems
• Familiarity with frontend technologies such as HTML, CSS & JavaScript
• Experience leading large/complex projects
• Excellent communication skills with an ability to collaborate with colleagues and stakeholders
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills
• Familiarity with software development methodologies, such as pairing, code reviews, agile planning and continuous delivery

Desirable
• Experience identifying and fixing accessibility issues
• jQuery experience
• Experience managing or working on legacy systems
• Experience with data flow modelling
• React, Node.js & AWS skills

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons 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.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us. Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

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.