JOB DETAILS
JOB BAND: E
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-time
DEPARTMENT: BBC Product Group
LOCATION: London, Glasgow, Salford, Newcastle, Cardiff
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £95,000 - £110,000 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 is reimagining the data platform that powers industry reporting, north-star metrics, marketing, personalisation, business insight, digital application development, and content commissioning. As part of this, the BBC is moving towards a self-service data platform that supports analytical, machine learning, and near-real time use cases at scale.
We are looking for a Lead Architect to shape this next-generation platform. You will be responsible for developing reusable capabilities that enable data teams to ingest data through ELT/ETL pipelines, transform it across our data lake and warehouse, and make it available for production workloads. The platform must support the entire data lifecycle — from early exploration to operational production — while ensuring governance, security, and repeatability.
Our core environment is AWS, with Redshift at the centre, and we are consolidating towards a unified environment. Governance, data catalogue integration, and scalable pipelines are essential to this vision.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM
This is a critical role that will see you embedded in cross-functional teams operating within the Product Operating Model, working with engineers, product managers, data scientists, delivery managers, and security specialists. You will also collaborate closely with architects across the BBC to ensure coherence and alignment with wider enterprise architecture.
We want the BBC to be as renowned for the quality of its engineering as it is for the quality of its content. This role offers the opportunity to work in a collaborative environment, on systems of national scale and impact, shaping the future of data at the BBC.
Your Key Responsibilities And Impact
* Partner with Product and Engineering from discovery through delivery to ensure solutions are feasible, sustainable, and aligned with BBC's data strategy.
* Co-own architectural decisions, embedding oversight into cross-functional teams and documenting choices through ADRs.
* Provide architectural leadership across the BBC ecosystem, ensuring technical coherence, managing dependencies, and minimising complexity.
* Champion patterns, best practices, and evolutionary design approaches to deliver secure, robust, and repeatable solutions.
* Mentor and coach engineering teams, raising technical delivery standards and communicating architecture clearly to all stakeholders.
Your Skills And Experience
ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:
* Proven architecture experience designing high-volume, near-real time data platforms with strong focus on resilience, reliability, and security.
* Expertise in AWS (particularly Redshift), ELT/ETL pipelines, and the full end-to-end data lifecycle from exploration to production.
* Experience embedding data governance, metadata management, and catalogue tooling into platform solutions.
* Demonstrated ability to collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to deliver on architectural strategy.
* Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence, translate technical detail, and shape a compelling strategic vision.
Desired But Not Required
* Experience enabling self-service analytical platforms and supporting use cases such as personalisation, machine learning, and advanced analytics.
* Knowledge of big data technologies and their practical application for technical and data professionals.
* Experience in agile software delivery at scale, with a perspective on what good looks like in data engineering.
* Knowledge of cloud-native and microservice architectures across multiple domains (web, mobile, data).
* Experience evaluating and advocating for emerging technologies to deliver business value.
If you can bring some of these skills and experience, 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.
For any general queries, please contact:
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.