Senior Architect - Audience Data

Job Introduction

We’re looking for a Senior Architect to join our growing teams supporting customer data capabilities, with specific focus on data ingest, real-time streaming and core platform infrastructure.

We are responsible for the data platform that helps the BBC to gain insights into our audience and our content to ensure that the BBC can produce world class content and product experiences for our audience. The data platform empowers the ingestion of data, including first party data, as well as providing capabilities to transform, consume, visualise, and understand the data. Our team additionally uses the data that we collect to power some of the BBC’s personalisation services that make our products feel more relevant to our audience.

This key role will be responsible for realising the architectural oversight of our data capabilities.

The role will play a key part to help us build flexible, distinctive, resilient, consistent & intuitive tools to empower teams to harness the power of data about our audiences and content. You will work closely with the Lead Architect for the Data Platform and alongside other architects in our Product Group to contribute to the strategy for the services which manage content and metadata, audience data and audience accounts. Our Architects are embedded into teams where you will work closely with product, engineering, QA, business analysts, stakeholder’s, and user experience teams, in agile development teams, at all stages of development.

We are looking for someone to be an advocate for the needs of the users of data services and who can communicate with a broad community of data professionals and users of data across the BBC.

The BBC offers an inclusive workplace with a commitment to ensure that fairness, respect, equality, dignity, and freedom are promoted and are part of our everyday goals and behaviour. We select candidates for our positions based on merit and as an equal opportunity employer we value diversity and all the benefits it brings.

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 architecture role means working in a collaborative environment, being part of a world-class team and a chance to do the most meaningful work of your career.

We take personal development seriously and offer innovation time and access to a wide variety of training and conferences

Main Responsibilities

On a typical day, you will:

• You will build effective relationships and work with engineering teams, product owners, stakeholders, architect’s and any 3rd party suppliers to ensure the predictable and reliable delivery of our goals aligned with the department’s technical guidelines and strategy.
• You will assist the engineering teams with the definition of project scope and technical approach during project inception and to assist in the definition of implementation
• You will assist the department’s architecture team in identifying strategic requirements, business risks and advising on cross platform roadmaps and migration plans to achieve strategic goals.
• You will provide technical advice and consultancy to our management, commissioning, and project teams on matters of technical architecture and infrastructure developments, including their feasibility.
• You will assist with improving the standard of technical delivery and expertise within the engineering teams through coaching and mentoring staff.
• You will be responsible for communicating and documenting the technical architecture of our systems.
• This role does not usually involve line management, but as a technical expert you will guide & mentor more junior colleagues in our technical disciplines.

The day-to-day

• Culture: In this role, you’ll be embedded within our cross-discipline development teams, working closely with product, engineering, QA and user experience teams. Every day you’ll collaborate with a wide range of high-calibre professionals, of all disciplines. We have an open and respectful culture where everyone’s opinions are valued.
• Location: Our team is based across the country, and predominately work remotely, occasionally coming together for collaboration. We have main development hubs for data teams in Salford, Cardiff, and London, and we have stakeholders based across the UK. We are actively building out data teams within our Newcastle hub.
• Growth: This is a flexible role, which you can shape based on how you’d like to grow your skills and career. There are always plenty of opportunities to learn, take on new responsibilities, attend conferences, and so much more.

Are you the right candidate?

You may have experience in some, but not necessarily all, of the following:

• Demonstrable architecture experience ideally with a focus on first-party audience data or big data technologies.
• Experience in agile software delivery at scale with a strong perspective of what good looks like.
• Knowledge of cloud computing and microservice architectures with experience of multiple application domains ideally including web, mobile and data
• Experience in working with a multi-disciplinary delivery team of product managers, engineers and analysts to ensure delivery of an architectural strategy.
• Experience of collaborating across organisational boundaries to align work to agreed strategic direction
• Experience evaluating existing and emerging technologies and their potential uses to support delivery of business value.
• Experience in developing and advocating technology strategies.

• Knowledge of event driven architectures, near-real time stream processing and batch processing.

As an organisation we support and encourage all our colleagues in gaining new skills and experiences.

Do you have these attributes?

• Excellent communications skills with the ability to influence change.
• Help teams choose the best solution to complex problems.
• Ability to communicate at all levels and translate technical jargon for non-technical staff.
• Ability to devise strategic vision and to articulate that vision to all audiences.
• Ability to make informed choices based on empirical evidence
• Able to work collaboratively and maintain effective relationships at all levels within an organisation.
• Self-motivated with the ability to inspire others with energy, drive and desire to achieve goals.
• A passion for learning and self-improvement.

About the BBC

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 in the document attached below.

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 here

Package Description

Band: D
Contract type: Permanent- Full time
Location: London/ Salford / Newcastle/ Glasgow

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression – the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits- We offer a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.