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Job Introduction

We are looking for a Software Engineer in Test to join our BBC Monitoring development team. If this is you, you will have some experience of some (but not necessarily all) of the following. Experience of 4-5 of these and a willingness to learn:
Working independently and engaging with software and systems engineering

• Investigating and proposing implementation of test automation tools
• Experience with testing Python
• Experience with testing Javascript
• Good testing experience and ability to define and scope tests for ongoing delivery and solution improvements
• A desire to define and implement good testing practices and work with development team to ensure a process that fits to the team workflows
• Curiosity and a desire to get hands dirty and improve the way things work
• Good knowledge of software process and how to think of total cost of ownership for maintenance
• Some DevOps experience of Jenkins and CI/CD practices
• Experience with AWS solutions and cloud hosting practices
• Experience with virtualised test environments
• Cross browser testing

BBC Monitoring (BBCM) provides news and information based on our monitoring of open-source media from over 150 countries in more than 100 languages and across all platforms. It is a centre of expertise and an important part of the BBC’s newsgathering operation with journalists based in the UK and international bureaux. Our extensive operation enables us to provide insightful and reliable coverage of political, economic, security and media news. Our round –the-clock reporting of TV, radio, press, news agencies, digital and social media is also provided to commercial clients, partners, and the UK Government.

We are looking for a Software Engineer in Test to support in-house cloud based and on-prem business tools, specifically looking at the web testing functionality, UX and non-functional attributes. This role will be working with in-house users and journalists spread around the world in BBC bureaus, as well as with the software engineering team.

On top of the in-house systems, there are some 3rd party systems that need to be integrated for E2E testing.

The current tech stack comprises of JavaScript, Typescript, and React for the frontend. The backend systems include Python, Django, MySQL, Postgres, and Elastic Search. Applications are hosted on Linux across AWS and on-prem hosts.

The BBC Monitoring team works in a hybrid way but is based in London.

Main Responsibilities

As with any role, we would expect you to take some time getting up to speed with our business area, technical landscape and team practices. It may take weeks or months for you to feel that you’ve got a full grasp on things, but we’ll help you to contribute from day one, moving at your pace.

You will be working in collaborative agile team, alongside the Team Leads, Business Analysts, Business support teams, Architects and other Engineers to deliver quality solutions.

Over you first year, your focus and responsibilities will grow and develop. In the first 3 months you will be:

• Learning the BBC Monitoring technical and business domain.
• Getting up to speed with our legacy and new systems.
• Working with the business support teams and business analysts to define test scope and write acceptance criteria and functional tests.
• Writing automation code and running manual tests to support product releases.
• Take ownership of bug triage and defect management.

At 3-6 months (and beyond) you will be:

• Taking technical ownership of the test environments and planning deployments to the test environments.
• Supporting the agile team practices and shaping the test approach for BBC Monitoring.
• Learning new technologies and keeping abreast of existing technologies.

Beyond these responsibilities you will have time to focus on self-development, through Innovation Time (10%) and extensive training opportunities (via the BBC Academy).

Are you the right candidate?

You may already be a Software Engineer in Test and are looking for a new challenge or to broaden your experience; we can provide a supportive environment for you to explore the technology and systems that drive both digital and broadcast experiences for the audience.

You will have good communication and collaboration skills and an ability to see the big picture of business and technical flows to find ways to knit pieces together to create useful holistic solutions. Previous experience working with UX test automation will be a definite asset.

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: C
Contract type: Permanent
Location: London

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.