Senior Program Manager

Job Summary

HCLTech is looking for an Engineering Mindset Leader to drive Application Development and Transformation-led delivery for the BBC account. This role owns engineering culture, technical governance, and delivery quality across digital platform and modernization workstreams - acting as the senior technical anchor between HCLTech's delivery teams and BBC's technology and product leadership, and ensuring every release reflects a genuine engineering-first mindset rather than a project-completion mindset.

Key Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Mindset & Culture

• Champion a quality-first, automation-first engineering culture across all AD/Transformation pods on the account.
• Institutionalize clean-code, secure-coding, and rigorous peer-review practices across delivery teams.
• Drive DevSecOps adoption - CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, automated testing, and shift-left security.
• Instill engineering discipline around scale, resilience, and accessibility, given the BBC's public-service scrutiny and traffic spikes during major events.

Delivery Leadership & Technical Governance

• Own end-to-end technical delivery for BBC's AD/Transformation workstreams, ensuring on-time, high-quality releases.
• Set up and run architecture governance - design reviews, coding standards, and non-functional requirement sign-off.
• Drive the modernization roadmap - legacy monolith to microservices, cloud-native, API-first architectures.
• Own technical risk, dependency, and technical-debt management across the delivery portfolio.
• Track and report engineering health metrics (velocity, defect leakage, deployment frequency, MTTR) to account and client leadership.

Client & Stakeholder Engagement

• Act as the primary engineering counterpart to BBC's technology and product leadership.
• Translate BBC's digital transformation goals into actionable engineering roadmaps and delivery plans.
• Represent HCLTech in technical governance forums, steering committees, and architecture councils.
• Build the trusted-advisor relationships that grow HCLTech's engineering footprint within the account.
• Operate as the embedded, on-the-ground engineering leader at BBC's offices, providing day-to-day client presence and bridging the onshore-offshore delivery model.

Team Building, Coaching & Talent

• Build, mentor, and retain a high-performing engineering team spanning developers, architects, QE, and DevOps.
• Define skilling plans and technical career paths aligned to the BBC account's technology direction.
• Foster ownership, continuous learning, and engineering craftsmanship across the pods.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Drive adoption of platform engineering, observability, and GenAI-assisted SDLC practices.
• Lead pilots for tooling, automation, and modernization accelerators relevant to media/broadcast platforms.

Contribute learnings back into HCLTech's engineering Centre of Excellence

Skill Requirements

Required Skills & Experience

• 16-20 years in IT with substantial experience in Application Development / Digital Transformation delivery.
• Proven track record leading engineering teams of 20+ engineers in a services or product delivery environment.
• Strong hands-on engineering background (full-stack/backend) - Java, .NET, or Node.js ecosystems.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), microservices architecture, and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Strong command of DevSecOps practices - CI/CD pipelines, IaC (Terraform), automated testing, and observability.
• Demonstrated experience driving legacy modernization or platform transformation programs at scale.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills, including direct experience working with UK-based client leadership.
• Solid grounding in Agile/Scaled Agile delivery models.
• Willingness and ability to be based onsite at London, UK (BBC premises; exact site to be confirmed) (including any necessary work authorization/relocation).

Preferred / Good to Have

• Prior experience in media, broadcast, streaming, or high-traffic consumer digital platforms.
• Familiarity with content management systems, personalization engines, or streaming/video platforms.
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG) and public-sector-grade compliance requirements.
• Relevant certifications - cloud architect (AWS/Azure), TOGAF, SAFe, or equivalent.
• Exposure to AI/ML-assisted engineering productivity tools.
• Prior experience operating in an onshore, client-facing leadership role while directing an offshore delivery organization.

What Success Looks Like (First 6-12 Months)

• Clear engineering standards and governance established and adopted across all pods.
• Measurable improvement in delivery and quality metrics (defect leakage, release cadence, incident rate).
• Recognized by BBC stakeholders as a credible engineering thought leader, not just a delivery escalation point.
• A stable, motivated, and upskilled engineering team with a visible succession pipeline.

Other Requirements