Software Engineer

We are looking for a DevOps Software Engineer with a passion for Automation (Infrastructure, Testing, Deployment), Cloud Technologies and good professional software engineering methodologies and practices. The ideal candidate could really have a significant impact in shaping our processes and direction in the exciting BBC Images team.,

• Making significant improvements in our overall testing strategy, deployment of cloud infrastructure and release processes.


• Integrating BBC Images with other tools and workflows within the BBC.


• Collaborating with The Guardian Media Group to set the direction of this software.


• Working closely with the embedded Product Manager, Engineering Manager, Architects and Business Analysts to drive more functionality and uptake of BBC Images within the BBC.


This role based at our impressive Glasgow office on the banks of the Clyde. We are hybrid working from home and office (minimum of 1 day per week in office)., At the BBC we as passionate about supporting you to be the best Software Engineer that you can be. As such we understand that it might take you some time to get up to speed and learn our business and technical domain, and team processes. You will join a team who are keen on collaboration and will guide you over the first weeks and months as you settle into the role.

You will be working in a cross-discipline team, collaborating with the Engineering Manager, Product Manager, Delivery Manager, Architect, BA/UX and other Engineers to deliver robust, quality software.

Over you first year, your focus and responsibilities will grow and develop. In the first month you will be:


• Learning the BBC Images business processes and technical stack.


• Getting up to speed with our AWS architecture.


• Getting hands-on and pairing on development tickets, taking part in architecture reviews, lookahead sessions and retrospectives.

In months 2 to 6 you will be:

• Making improvements to our automated testing strategy and processes.


• Working to implement a more automated infrastructure provisioning and deployment pipeline.


• Supporting the other engineers and disciplines in making small improvements and bug fixes.


At 6 months (and beyond) you will be:


• Working full stack. Collaborating to maintain our DevOps responsibilities as well as doing back and front end development to roll out new features and improvements to BBC Images.


• Taking technical ownership of larger pieces of work, and providing valued input into design, planning and estimation of the team's technical output.


• Picking up in-hours production support issues.


• Mentoring and supporting our team of developers.


• Learning new technologies and keeping abreast of existing technologies.


Beyond these responsibilities you will have time to focus on self-development, through Innovation Time (10%) and extensive training opportunities (via the BBC Academy).

Are you the right candidate

As an employer who puts inclusivity as one of our utmost priorities, we will of course make every accommodation and adjustment for any accessibility needs (through both the interview stage and the role going forward).

In this role you will get the opportunity to be truly full stack: DevOps Infrastructure, Front End, Back End, and Testing. Your work will be interesting and varied, all within our own control and ownership within the team., In the first session, we will ask you to explain a technical architecture which you helped to deliver. We will ask questions around the architecture, the decisions made and your role in them. This will be scored on your ability to effectively communicate the architecture and the reasoning behind it, as well as your ability to provide answers to follow up questions. As this interview will be conducted remotely, you will want to prepare a diagram to share.

The second session will take a more traditional questions and answers style interview. In this session we will learn more about your experience of the full development lifecycle, the previous projects you have worked on and roles you have had, as well as your approach to team processes.

Test Automation / Testing Strategy / Strong QA background.
- Creating / Managing / Improving CI/CD pipelines.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The technologies we use are (ideally you would be experienced in one or more):

- Javascript
- Python
- Scala/Java (or equivalent)

Desirable (but not essential) would be experience in some of the following:

- Elasticsearch
- Play Framework
- Angular/React
- Microservice / Event Driven Architectures

We are a team that values working collaboratively, often through pairing. We like practices such as Scrum, Test-Driven Development and Continuous Deployment but, more importantly, we encourage continuous improvement - we embrace change.

Images help the BBC tell stories in a way that engages our audience. Breaking news is more informative when accompanied by photos from the scene. Programmes on iPlayer are more easily discovered if they have an interesting thumbnail. Our 100-year-old image archive can bring the past to life on our newest digital products. But programme makers and journalists need to be able to find these images easily.

BBC Images is the tool that manages the BBC's still image assets. It is the BBC's instance of Grid, which was open sourced by The Guardian Media Group. The BBC and The Guardian work in close collaboration with a shared aim of making Grid the world-leading still image asset management system.

You will join a recently established team in the BBC to build upon this product which has been developed over the past few years (3 engineers currently).

This year we will work on many interesting challenges, some of which are