Principal Software Engineer - FTC
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 7, 2026. First seen by Alion on Nov 6, 2026. BBC scores A on the Alion truth index.
JOB DETAILS
JOB BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: 12 month FTC
DEPARTMENT: Media Supply Chain Technology, which is part of Global Technology
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: £78,000 - £85,000 on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. Plus London Weighting Allowance of £5,441. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
We're happy to discuss flexible working. If you'd like to, please indicate your preference in the application - though there's no obligation to do so now. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.
WE ARE BBC STUDIOS
A globally renowned media company borne of the BBC. We make and distribute the world’s most sought-after TV, audio and digital content.
Our ambition is to be the home of the most powerful, entertaining, and inspiring stories for people all around the world.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
This is a 12 month FTC, the role is for a Principal Software Engineer to lead development for work order fulfilment order within a major media supply chain transformation programme. The position is critical for delivering modern, cloud-native, serverless workflows that underpin BBC Studios’ global content operations. This is a highly technical role, working closely with architects, developers, and product teams to drive end-to-end delivery and future-proof our technology stack.
We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer with strong expertise in AWS serverless technologies, TypeScript, Python, and DevOps practices. You'll work closely with architects, product teams, and developers to build scalable, reliable, and observable solutions while driving engineering best practice and innovation.
You’ll remain actively involved in coding, technical decision-making, code reviews, deployment planning, and team collaboration. Experience with media processing workflows is highly desirable, as it will help accelerate delivery in this specialist domain.
WHY JOIN THE TEAM
The team integrates Polaris by Fabric Insights and Rally by SDVI, alongside internally developed products including the Fulfilment Service. Applications use TypeScript across the backend and frontend, and Python/Django, with infrastructure hosted in AWS. Close collaboration with other BBCS MSCE teams and third-party technical teams is central to the role.
YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:
- Lead development activities ensuring end-to-end delivery of working software to business value.
- Facilitate agile ceremonies (stand-ups, backlog refinements).
- Plan and prioritise team capacity, balancing support, maintenance, security and technical debt with programme commitments and new business features. Make trade-offs and delivery risks clear to stakeholders.
- Build effective relationships with third-party technical teams, coordinating integration changes, investigating faults and following issues through to resolution.
- Collaborate with architects to ensure designs are: well understood by development teams & deliverable iteratively & fit for long-term operational support.
- Champion continuous improvement in processes, tools, and engineering practices.
- Future-proof development processes by introducing modern approaches and leveraging AI tools.
- Ensure observability, scalability, and maintainability across solutions.
- Act as a trusted technical leader, mentoring developers and fostering knowledge sharing.
YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
ESSENTIAL CRITERIA:
- A hands-on technical leader with a strong background in AWS serverless and cloud-native architectures, passionate about building modern systems that deliver business value quickly.
- Proven experience leading technical teams in a DevOps environment using an Agile methodology.
- Experience managing technical integrations and working directly with third-party technical teams to resolve issues and coordinate changes.
- AWS Serverless expertise: Lambda, Step Functions, SNS/SQS/EventBridge.
- Highly skilled in TypeScript & Python
- Observability, monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing for serverless/microservices.
- Databases experience with at least two of the following:
DynamoDB
Aurora PostgreSQL
MongoDB/DocumentDB (or similar NoSQL solutions
Cloud Architecture: AWS Associate level certification or equivalent experience building serverless solutions.
DESIRED BUT NOT REQUIRED:
- Knowledge of media processing workflows (transcoding, metadata pipelines).
- Django experience or strong desire to learn.
- Familiarity with Polaris by Fabric Insights (formerly known as TMT) or Rally by SDVI, or comparable media workflow platforms.
If you can bring some of these skills and experience, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply
NEXT STEPS
We appreciate your interest in this position and understand how important this opportunity is to you. Due to the high volume of interest we may need to close the application period earlier than anticipated. This step is necessary to ensure we can provide a high level of attention and service to all applicants. Thank you for your understanding.