Software Engineering Graduate Scheme Manager

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Job Band: D

Job number: 21043

Starting salary: £73,000 - £83,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience.

Contract Type: Continuing

Location: Salford, Hybrid (one day per week in the office plus occasional travel to other offices).

Interview Process: Virtual interview for shortlisted candidates – approximately one hour of competency and values-based questions. Interviews will take place on 26 and 27 March 2025.

The Scheme

The BBC Software Engineering Graduate Scheme was established in 2011 with just 4 trainees, but now typically recruits around 20 trainees per year across Glasgow, London and Salford. It is a two-year on-the-job training scheme comprising 4 x 6 month rotations, which you will coordinate to ensure that trainees gain as much experience as possible across the two years. The scheme has a 100% completion rate and former trainees typically stay longer and progress more quickly after the scheme. It attracts a diverse range of candidates, including Computer Science (or similar) graduates, coding bootcamp graduates and those who are self-taught. Trainees are required to have some demonstrable previous programming experience.

Key Responsibilities

• On a day-to-day basis you will have sole responsibility for the line management of up to 40 software engineering trainees, across 3 locations.
• You will support each trainee’s entire early careers journey, from recruitment to transitioning into a role.
• You will manage, and be accountable for, the annual planning, attraction, shortlisting, assessment, onboarding and probation of new trainee cohorts, ensuring that all BBC Technology + Product Group diversity targets are either met or surpassed per each cohort.
• Assessments typically involve 80+ candidates across 3 UK locations.
• You will continuously monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the scheme, collecting feedback from colleagues and stakeholders, using data and metrics to assess its impact and to drive continuous improvement.
• You will collaborate with BBC Technology + Product Group colleagues to ensure that the trainee experience is positive and consistent, to ensure that rotation teams are invested in and understand trainees’ learning requirements and to ensure that trainee performance and progress is regularly recorded and reviewed.
• You will work closely with your stakeholders to ensure that trainees are retained within Technology + Product Group at the end of the scheme and to ensure that the scheme continues to meet the talent and skills requirements of the business.
• You will establish and nurture relationships with a growing number of local training providers across three locations to promote the scheme and to encourage students to view the BBC as a future place of work.
• You will work with the BBC Academy’s technical training team and external training providers to provide technical and additional relevant training for trainees which meets the objectives of BBC Product and Technology Group.
• Your positive impact will enable scheme trainees to successfully attain the required skills, knowledge and behaviours to enable them to have a successful and long-term career in software engineering at the BBC.

Are you the right candidate?

Essential Skills and Experience

• You have previous experience of managing trainee programme/s in a software engineering environment.
• You have previous experience of directly people managing a large, diverse team, including goal setting and reviewing and holding regular 1:1s with progress, issues and concerns recorded and appropriately actioned.
• You have previous experience of managing at-scale recruitment.
• You have experience of working collaboratively with local training providers such as coding bootcamps, colleges, universities and external organisations supporting underrepresented groups in the software engineering industry.
• You have experience of evaluating and implementing training programmes.
• You are a good listener with excellent communication skills.
• You have good attention to detail.
• You are proactive and work well on your own initiative.
• You are able to work well under pressure and to tight deadlines.
• You have experience of managing a project end-to-end.
• You have event management experience.

About The BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants. Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk. 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.

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.