Job Closing Date: 23:59 Wednesday 28 January 2026
Purpose of the Role
The BBC’s Product Management function is looking to appoint a Head of Product, Data Platform to play a key role in the growth of the BBC’s digital products and a best‑in‑class product culture.
Your Key Responsibilities and Impact
As Head of Product, Data Platform you will have responsibility for a large team of Product Managers leading the product strategy, roadmap prioritisation and development of our core data and quantitative insights platforms. You will be a crucial member of a cross‑functional Senior Leadership Team for your area, and work closely with Product colleagues in our Experience and Platform teams. You will collaborate with editorial, marketing and other peers to ensure the delivery of the BBC’s strategic objectives, while also crafting a culture of excellence.
Your key day‑to‑day responsibilities will include:
Vision, strategy and collaboration
* Defining, developing and communicating a ‘platform‑first’ vision and strategy for Data Platform, focusing on scalability, reliability, and extensibility to drive forward the BBC’s product, service and editorial ecosystems
* Building a roadmap for platform development that balances technical innovation, business priorities, and operational excellence, and collaborating closely with Engineering, Data, and Experience and Platform Product peers, and stakeholders from the wider organisation, to ensure alignment and progress against organisational goals and priorities
* Ensuring teams within the Data Platform domain are attuned to the needs of their Platform and Experience colleagues in planning and executing impactful work in an efficient and collaborative way
* Working closely with Engineering colleagues to ensure the platform architecture supports scalability, high availability, and low latency, while proactively identifying and mitigating risks which might compromise organisational objectives, and supporting the Director of Product, Platforms to build and communicate the BBC’s wider platform strategy
Team leadership
* Leading a large team of Product Managers: coaching and mentoring colleagues at a variety of levels to build a high‑performance and collaborative culture. Helping to create a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming environment, where everybody feels supported to be their authentic self
* Undertaking line management and team leadership tasks, such as performance management, resource planning and budget management, recruitment and talent development
* Proactively contributing to the Product Management leadership team and leadership community across Product Group: progressing people, culture and best‑in‑class ways of working across the Group
* Defining, modelling and refining high‑quality Product craft at all stages of the Product Development Lifecycle, with an emphasis on data‑informed decision making, outcome‑focus, experimentation and continuous discovery
Platform and technical
* Building and managing the BBC’s data platform, ensuring it provides the foundation for advanced analytics, personalisation, and machine learning to empower other Platform teams and user‑facing Experience colleagues
* Partnering with Data Science and Analytics teams to deliver tools for user behaviour analysis, feature performance tracking, and A/B testing and collaborating with GTM Product Leaders to ensure the data infrastructure supports real‑time insights and marketing automation needs
* Staying ahead of industry trends in cloud computing, DevOps, AI/ML, and other platform‑related technologies to future‑proof the organisation
* Evaluating and introducing tools or frameworks that enhance platform capabilities and performance. Defining and tracking leading and lagging metrics for platform performance, such as uptime, latency, and adoption by downstream teams
* Ensuring platform services meet the highest security and compliance standards in partnership with legal and compliance teams
Your Skills and Experience
ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:
* Significant & demonstrable experience in Product Management, with specific expertise in platforms, infrastructure and/or technical products. Experience around data ingestion and analytics platforms would also be beneficial
* Significant experience in Product leadership roles – including defining product strategy and roadmaps, determining metrics and targets, and successfully executing at all stages of the Product Development Lifecycle
* Skilled at balancing user needs, technical feasibility and organisational dynamics, to effectively prioritise and manage trade‑offs between short‑term needs and long‑term investments
* Experience influencing without direct authority in matrixed or cross‑functional organisations
* Track record of delivering complex, scalable, reliable, and reusable systems on time and within budget
* Successful and close collaboration with engineering, data, design and product teams to deliver shared platform capabilities
* Demonstrable experience in establishing technical standards and non‑technical ways of working, from problem‑solution definition to API design standards and versioning practices
* Strong technical acumen, with a solid understanding of APIs, cloud platforms, and data infrastructure
* Analytical mindset with experience in defining and tracking platform‑related performance metrics
* Experience of writing and evaluating product specifications, proposals and reports
* Experience of managing a large team (c.20‑60) to deliver a large, high‑profile, strategic product, service or platform for a large digital organisation
* Experience of managing multi‑disciplinary teams within an agile environment and an in‑depth knowledge of agile delivery principles, quality software engineering processes and practices
* Understanding or experience of developing GenAI solutions
* Ability to plan and forecast product budget and deliver within that budget.
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.
Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment 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.
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.
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 pension scheme 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 or on an orchestra conditions contract.
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: reasonable.adjustments@bbc.co.uk
BBC Group and Public Services, Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London, United Kingdom, W1A 1AA. BBC Studios Distribution Limited, company no: 01420028, registered address: 1 Television Centre, 101 Wood Lane, London, United Kingdom W12 7FA.
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