Senior Principal Software Engineer, Salford, England, United Kingdom

Senior Principal Software Engineer

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Job Requisition ID: 26585

Job Closing Date: 18/08/2025

Job Package

ROLE: Senior Principal Software Engineer

DEPARTMENT: Web

JOB BAND: E

CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent, Full-time

LOCATION: Salford, Glasgow, London, Newcastle, Cardiff. This is a hybrid role and the successful candidate will balance office working with home working.

Job Intro

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 a chance to do the most meaningful work of your career.

Product Group now has an area called “Web” that focusses on the entirety of the BBC’s website. For the first time, we are introducing a Senior Principal Software Engineer role into the Web area. This unique role will work across the broad range of web teams and help identify and deliver engineering opportunities and drive technical excellence in how we make the BBC website even more successful. The role will work closely with engineering and architecture leadership, as well as other disciplines, to collaborate on opportunities that drive growth. Millions of people around the world use our website daily; and we have ambition to significantly grow this further.

As the ideal candidate you’ll have strong experience working with large engineering teams, as well as being an excellent communicator and collaborator. You’ll also be very comfortable working with web technologies – such as React, TypeScript, and CSS – as well as the broader technology landscape such as networking, the cloud, and accessibility. You’ll have a thirst for new opportunities – such as those offered by AI – whilst also understanding the operational and safety needs of a large organisation. You’ll also be a self-starter, excellent at seeking opportunities and reaching out to others to make great things happen.

Main Responsibilities

This role is an Individual Contributor (IC) role. It does not include line management.

Your Responsibilities Will Include

Being a role model for engineering culture – embodying engineering values such as quality, collaboration, curiosity, inclusion, and pace. This includes mentoring senior/principal engineers.
Working closely with engineering teams, and particularly the principal engineer community, to drive best engineering practice and build strong and inclusive teams.
Using your position across all six web groups to share best-practice and understanding, and drive collaboration and consistency.
Helping the successful operation of our website – e.g. acting as Incident Commander during major incidents or helping diagnose major issues.
Supporting critical projects, e.g. a General Election, as required.
Partnering with other disciplines to solve complex challenges and provide understanding of our engineering strengths and opportunities.
Being part of a Senior Principal Software Engineer community across Product Group, to drive world-class engineering standards across all that we do.

In addition, you will be asked to specifically focus on innovation and engineering velocity, to help our Web engineering teams become as fast and efficient as they safely can be in creating new product value.

This Includes

AI – looking at the practical, technology, and cultural changes required to ensure we use AI as effectively as possible in our engineering and testing. This will include an understanding of the relative merits of each AI solution (e.g. GitHub Co-Pilot) and championing best practice.
Prototyping – considering the engineering approaches required to do rapid prototyping, to partner with product and UX on product discovery.
Experimentation – identifying the tools and approaches that enable dozens of experiments to safely execute at once. This may include additional engineering tools – sandboxes, common libraries, lighter-weight test frameworks, etc.
Test – supporting our test and engineering teams to ensure our tests are as efficient as possible to evolve & execute – including increased automation, greater CI/CD pipeline efficiency, and relevant use of AI

Are you the right candidate?

The Ideal Candidate Will Have

Significant experience as a lead/staff/principal software engineer (or similar role), with a strong track record of impact across multiple teams or domains.
Deep knowledge of modern web technologies (e.g. React, TypeScript, Node.JS, CSS) and experience working on large-scale, high-availability web platforms.
A collaborative and empowering leadership style, with experience mentoring engineers and influencing stakeholders across disciplines.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, able to simplify complex topics for diverse audiences, from engineers to executives.
The ability to balance technical depth with strategic thinking, comfortable working across both high-level architecture and hands-on technical issues.
A passion for engineering craft and innovation — always exploring new technologies (e.g. AI, edge computing, performance tooling) and evaluating their relevance.
A user-focused mindset, considering accessibility, performance, and inclusivity as foundational principles of good engineering.
Comfort working in a matrixed or cross-functional environment, building coalitions across teams with different goals.

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

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.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click

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.

Seniority level

Seniority level
Mid-Senior level

Employment type

Employment type
Full-time

Job function

Job function
Engineering and Information Technology
Industries
Online Media

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Location:: Salford, England, United Kingdom
Salary:: £150,000 - £200,000
Job Type:: FullTime
Category:: IT & Technology

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