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JOB DETAILS
Band: (Band E)
Salary: Upto £110,000 base salary depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience.
Contract type: Permanent role
Location: This is a hybrid role, and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working – Salford or London office – 1 to 2 days a week

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
We want the BBC to be as renowned for the quality of its engineering as it is for the quality of its content. We aspire to be the best so that we can engineer outstanding digital products, at scale. Working here in an engineering role means being part of a world‑class team — and an opportunity to do some of the most meaningful work of your career.

Our Account & Identity platform underpins the BBC’s digital future, with Identity & Access Management (IAM) at its core. To meet our strategic ambitions, we are evolving into three dedicated groups: Account Capabilities, Account Platform, and User Engagement. Together, they will deliver resilient, scalable foundations and audience‑facing value at pace.

We are now hiring a Senior Principal Engineer to act as a cross‑group technical leader. This is a senior individual contributor role, accountable for engineering practices, standards, and cost efficiency across all three groups. You will be expected to bring deep IAM expertise, while also providing floating technical leadership across Account Capabilities, Account Platform, and User Engagement.

Interview Process
We believe in fairness, transparency, and giving candidates the best opportunity to demonstrate their strengths.
Our Process Has Two Stages

• Practical Exercise – a focused task designed to explore your approach to problem‑solving and technical decision‑making.
• Panel Interview – a values‑based and technical conversation with peers and leaders, where we’ll discuss your experience, approach, and how you’d tackle the challenges of this role.

Your Key Responsibilities And Impact

• Own and shape the future of Identity and Access Management (IAM) at the BBC — guiding architectural direction, evaluating vendor solutions, and ensuring successful integration of third‑party platforms.
• Provide cross‑group technical leadership across Account Capabilities, Account Platform, and User Engagement, ensuring cohesion, clarity, and alignment to shared principles.
• Define and embed engineering standards that raise the bar for quality, security, and operational resilience across multiple teams.
• Ensure scalability and sustainability of our account and identity systems to support long‑term growth and global reach.
• Support and mentor Principal Engineers and Team Leads, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Work in partnership with cross‑discipline peers to align technical strategy with business goals and accelerate time‑to‑market.

Essential Skills

• Identity & Access Management (IAM): Proven expertise in IAM systems, authentication flows, and standards (OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, MFA).
• Consumer scale IAM delivery experience.
• Senior IC level (Senior Principal / Staff Engineer) with cross team influence.
• Strong grasp of modern engineering practices (DevOps, cloud native, infrastructure as code) with focus on cost, performance, and reliability.
• Proven ability to step into complex initiatives, bring clarity, and deliver results.

Desirable Skills

• Experience evaluating and integrating vendor solutions at scale.
• Broader platform architecture knowledge beyond IAM.
• Skilled in mentoring Principal Engineers and Team Leads.
• Comfortable working in ambiguity and embedding sustainable practices.
• Strong collaboration across disciplines (product, delivery, architecture).

We select candidates on merit and value diversity in all its forms.

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 an equal opportunities employer.