Senior Business & Legal Affairs Manager - Bristol

Job Requisition ID: 40480 | Job Closing Date: 13th March 2026 | Location: Bridgewater House, Bristol (hybrid: at least 2 days per week). Preferred if located in Bristol or willing to commute.

JOB DETAILS

• Job band: E
• Contract type: Permanent – Full‐time
• Department: Natural History Unit – Legal
• Proposed salary range: £80,000 – £95,000 plus 15% bonus. This reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.
• Flexible working options available for 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.

WHY JOIN OUR TEAM

BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is the best‐known and most loved producer of natural history content in the world. Our programmes include breath‐taking landmarks (Frozen Planet II; The Green Planet; Seven Worlds, One Planet; Dynasties II; Blue Planet II; Planet Earth II), returning series and technically challenging live shows (Springwatch; Blue Planet Live) and award‐winning children's series (Andy's Safari Adventures). We also produce content for third parties such as Prehistoric Planet for AppleTV+, The Americas for NBCU, and OceanXplorers, a co‐production with OceanX Media and James Cameron for National Geographic Disney+.

NHU is now part of an exciting new Unscripted group within BBC Studios, which also includes the Factual production teams that make Religion, Science, Docs and other specialist factual programming alongside Entertainment Productions.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

Join the NHU's Business and Legal Affairs team as Senior Business and Legal Affairs Manager, based in Bristol. You will provide business affairs advice and support across NHU's varied and award‐winning slate.

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT

• Negotiate and draft a wide range of complex unscripted production and development agreements, including key on‐screen talent, linear/SVOD commissioning, co‐development, co‐production, funding and other rights agreements.
• Anticipate and mitigate legal, financial, reputational and business risk while offering strategies or alternative ideas to resolve them.
• Act as a principal point of contact for the production areas you support and deliver timely, high‐quality legal and business affairs advice to maximise business goals.
• Manage a broad workload autonomously, referring upwards as required.
• Propose and deliver structures for complicated rights and commercial deals in unscripted production and development, and understand and implement commercial and business strategies.
• Provide senior support to the Head of Business and Legal Affairs, including deputising when required.
• Provide line management and/or supervision support to the Business Affairs Managers, Executives and Assistants working on unscripted production agreements.
• Build excellent working relationships with production teams and become a trusted advisor for timely, high‐quality advice.
• Build strong relationships with other BBC Studios and BBC Public Service parts, and key external contacts.
• Demonstrate and champion BBC Group values, actively fostering a culture built on trust, empowerment, collaboration, creativity, and inclusion.

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

• Significant experience in complex drafting and negotiation of a variety of media rights agreements and advising on and managing risk.
• Proven interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to work effectively with and advise senior stakeholders.
• Adept at dealing with conflicts and helping to devise solutions where trade‐offs are involved.
• Experience working with media‐related commercial agreements, including media rights agreements.
• Highly business‐oriented, commercial approach.
• Proven experience in line management.

DESIRED BUT NOT REQUIRED

• Qualified lawyer (or similar legal qualification) with an appropriate level of PQE to effectively carry out the responsibilities.
• Significant knowledge of, and experience in, unscripted television content specifically.
• Experience negotiating complex unscripted television production agreements, such as commissioning agreements with global streaming platforms and US networks (e.g. Netflix, Apple, Amazon, NBCU) and co‐development/co‐production agreements; experience with US union agreements (e.g. SAG) would be favourable.
• Experience in a commercial, global organisation.
• A passion for media.

NEXT STEPS

We appreciate your interest in this position. Due to high volume of interest we may need to close the application period earlier than anticipated. Thank you for your understanding.

DISCLAIMER

This job description 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. It is not intended to be a complete, detailed account of all aspects of the duties involved.

Please note: If you are offered this role, the BBC will conduct employment screening checks including reference checks, eligibility to work checks, and if applicable to the role, safeguarding and adverse media/social media checks. Any offer is conditional on satisfactory completion of these checks.

REDELOYMENT

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC and will give them priority consideration ahead of other applicants.

DIVERSITY, INCLUSION & BELONGING

We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio‐economic background, religion and/or belief. We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to join us. The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences.

Find out more about diversity, inclusion, and belonging in our strategy below.

DISABILITY CONFIDENT

We are a disability confident employer. If you need to discuss adjustments or access requirements for the interview process or to carry out this role, please contact us via email: reasonable.adjustments@bbc.co.uk.