Senior Business & Legal Affairs Manager

Department: Entertainment Business & Legal Affairs

Job Band: E; Contract type: Permanent, Full‑time; Location: London TVC (Hybrid; 2 days per week).

Proposed salary range: up to £100,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. London Weighting Allowance: £5,441 and 15% Bonus OTE.

We are happy to discuss flexible working. If you would like to indicate your preference now, please do so in your application – though there's no obligation.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

Our Entertainment production team works on programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, Pete Wicks: For Dogs' Sake, Later with Jools Holland, Eurovision broadcasts, Comic Relief, Children in Need, The One Show, Dragons Den, Countryfile, Gardeners’ World, Bargain Hunt, Antiques Roadshow, travelogues, royal weddings/funerals/jubilees/coronation concerts and national war memorial events.

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Negotiate and draft a wide range of complex unscripted production and development agreements, including but not limited to 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 at the same time offering strategies or alternative ideas to resolve them.
• Act as the principal point of contact for the production areas you support, delivering timely and high quality legal and business affairs advice to maximise the business opportunity.
• 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.
• Offer 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 on the array of unscripted production agreements they work on day‑to‑day.
• Form excellent working relationships with the production teams you support so you become a trusted advisor.
• Form excellent working relationships with other parts of BBC Studios and BBC Public Service, as well as with key external contacts.

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

• Qualified lawyer (or similar legal qualification) with an appropriate level of PQE to effectively carry out the role.
• Sufficient experience in complex drafting and negotiation of a variety of television production rights agreements and advising on and managing risk.
• Highly business‑oriented with a commercial approach, recent experience in a commercial organisation.
• Adept at dealing with disagreements and helping to devise solutions where trade‑offs are involved.

DESIRED CRITERIA

• Experience in negotiating complex unscripted television production agreements, such as commissioning agreements with global streaming platforms (Netflix, Amazon, Apple) and co‑development/co‑production agreements.
• A passion for media.

We welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio‑economic background, religion and/or belief.

Please note that if you're offered this role, the BBC will conduct employment screening checks which include reference checks, eligibility to work checks and, where applicable, safeguarding and adverse media/social media checks. Any offer is conditional on satisfactory completion of these checks.