Senior Software Engineer in Test

JOB BAND: D
CONTRACT TYPE: Permanent.
DEPARTMENT: Authoring & Curation
LOCATION: London/Salford – Hybrid 1-2 days per week in-office
PROPOSED SALARY RANGE: salary: £55,000-£65,000 dependent on skills, knowledge and experience.

This is a hybrid role, offering a balance between office and home working. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. If you wish, please indicate your preference in your application, though there's no obligation to do so at this stage. Flexible working will be part of the discussion during the offer process.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

The Passports team, which sits within the BBC's Authoring and Curation area, is responsible for designing, building, and supporting the services that create and control the descriptive Metadata associated with all types of content (e.g. BBC Sounds audio, iPlayer video, News/Sport/World Service articles), allowing the BBC to provide a rich, engaging and above all relevant experience to millions of audience members every day. We're a cross-functional team and work with a varied technology stack that is typically Postgres or Mongo at the data layer, through Scala, JavaScript and Python services and lambdas in the middle, to React UIs at the top, mostly built in AWS.

We are a friendly and supportive team, and we love that we get to work on interesting and important problems that have a real impact on the audience's experience and the future of the BBC. The BBC has an industry-leading engineering culture with a strong focus on best practice and a wide range of opportunities for learning and career growth. Diverse representation of people within the team is vital, and we work in an open, supportive and inclusive manner. 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 means being part of a world-class team and a chance to do the most meaningful work of your career

The BBC’s digital products play a key role in our mission to inform, educate and entertain the audience. This is a great opportunity to play a key role in the future of products used by millions.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

This is an excellent opportunity to join a technically strong, collaborative team at the heart of the BBC’s content delivery. The Content Metadata team builds the systems that power rich, scalable metadata across BBC Sounds, iPlayer, News, Sport, and more, helping audiences discover relevant and engaging content.

You'll work in a cross-functional team that values clean architecture, thoughtful design, and engineering excellence. Our stack includes AWS, Scala, Python, JavaScript, Postgres, MongoDB, and React, enabling us to deliver robust, event-driven systems at scale.
At the BBC, we aim to set the standard for digital engineering. You’ll help shape products used by millions, supported by a culture of learning, experimentation, and high technical standards, all in service of our public mission to inform, educate, and entertain.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT:
• Design and implement effective test strategies across APIs, backend services, and UIs to support content metadata products.
• Embed testing early through Shift Left practices, collaborating with developers and product teams to define acceptance criteria and drive quality from the start.
• Build and maintain reliable automated tests using Playwright, alongside manual, exploratory, and cross-browser testing where needed.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines and a quality-focused DevOps culture, leveraging tools like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and AWS.

YOUR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL:
• Demonstrable experience in testing backend services and RESTful APIs, ensuring comprehensive functional, integration, and exploratory test coverage.
• Proven expertise in developing and maintaining automated test suites using frameworks such as Playwright, with strong scripting skills in JavaScript, TypeScript, or Python.
• Understanding of designing and executing performance and load tests using industry-standard tools like Gatling or k6.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD processes, with experience integrating automated testing within pipelines using tools such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins.
• Practical knowledge of cloud environments, particularly AWS, coupled with a strong commitment to Shift Left testing and adoption of Agile quality practices, including TDD and BDD.

DESIRED:
• Experience testing in microservices and event-driven architectures, with familiarity in messaging platforms such as Kafka, SNS, or SQS.
• Strong understanding of observability tools and techniques, including logging, distributed tracing, and metrics, to support efficient debugging and performance tuning.
• Experience working with load and performance testing.
• Experience of working with processes to improve code quality, such as pair programming and code reviews. Experience of working in a team with dev-ops responsibilities.

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.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Contracts of Employment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.

Disclaimer

This 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: [email protected]