Engineering Manager, Data ITV Careers

Workplace: White City, London – Hybrid

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead our Behavioural Data Engineering (BDE) team within ITV’s streaming technology organisation. As our Engineering Manager, you will lead a high-performing team of DevOps and Data Engineers within the Viewer Data Homezone. This isn’t a traditional feature‑delivery role; it is a Technical Orchestration role focused on building a resilient, code‑first operational platform, developing and growing the team that builds it too.

You won’t necessarily be writing the code, but you will be responsible for the “Logic Flow” of the systems your team builds. You will interpret roadmaps, navigate resource challenges, and act as the Guardian of Excellence, ensuring our data pipelines are as resilient as they are scalable, documented, and meet the highest non‑functional standards. While you’ll collaborate closely with a Lead Engineer who owns the deep technical architecture, your focus will be on the optimal flow of engineering: ensuring the team is organized, the backlog is lean, and our services meet the rigorous SLAs required for a world‑class streaming platform.

You will be a key partner to our Product and Delivery Managers, helping to navigate the transition from legacy analytical services to a modern, real‑time operational remit. Whether you’re challenging a design to ensure it can handle “unusual load parameters” or representing the team at a business‑wide Show & Tell, you are the glue that turns technical capability into business reliability.

The team at ITV powers the heartbeat of our streaming service. As the Engineering Manager for Behavioural Data Engineering (BDE), you are at the helm of the operational data platform that makes real‑time visibility possible. When millions of viewers tune in for a major live final, your team’s platform handles traffic spikes that double every 30 seconds. Your “ripples” are felt every time a Product Manager makes a data‑driven decision, every time Service Ops identifies a playback issue in seconds rather than minutes, and as we “shift‑left”—moving compute capability closer to the viewer to enable cutting‑edge AI and ML use‑cases. Without BDE, ITV stays blind; with BDE, we lead the digital streaming revolution.

Responsibilities:

• People Leadership: Oversee the training, development, and motivation of your squad. You will hold accountability for the performance and results of direct reports within the BDE specialty.
• Engineering Flow: Partner with the Delivery Manager to refine team processes, from backlog grooming to sprint reviews, ensuring a high‑velocity, low‑friction engineering environment.
• Strategic Transition: Collaborate with Product Managers to navigate the decommissioning of legacy analytical services, shifting the focus toward a modern, real‑time “shift‑left” data capability.
• Technical Orchestration: Manage the end‑to‑end delivery of real‑time data products, ensuring technical designs meet functional and non‑functional requirements (SLAs, high‑availability, and cost‑efficiency).
• Operational Reliability: Lead the team in building services capable of handling extreme traffic spikes (doubling every 30 seconds). You will manage the on‑call rota and ensure coverage during high‑profile live broadcast events.
• Advocacy & Communication: Represent the BDE team in “Show and Tells” and cross‑departmental forums, explaining complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Privacy & Compliance: Ensure all behavioural data collection and processing aligns with GDPR and other legal frameworks.

Skills you’ll need (minimum criteria):

• Technical Management in High‑Scale Environments: Proven experience managing engineering teams that handle high‑throughput, real‑time data ingestion.
• Cloud Native Expertise: Deep experience with the GCP stack (including Kubernetes) and a strong “infrastructure as code” mindset.
• Polyglot Engineering Literacy: While you don’t need to be an expert in all, you should be comfortable challenging designs and reviewing logic across Python & Go, with Scala, and Java as useful secondaries.
• Systems Thinking & Design: Ability to lead system design discussions, focusing on how modular components (Terraform/Lego blocks) fit together to build resilient platforms.
• Diplomatic Stakeholder Management: Experience in managing complex transitions between active and in development services.
• Data Sensitivity Knowledge: A solid understanding of GDPR and the legal implications of handling user behavioural data at scale.

Other things we’re looking for (key criteria):

• Experience leading, managing or building engineering teams in a cloud‑native environment (GCP primarily, with AWS as a secondary & nice to have).
• Demonstrable experience with DevOps‑heavy cultures and code‑first engineering practices.
• Proven ability to manage technical debt while delivering new high‑priority features.
• Experience in a data‑centric engineering field (Data Engineering, Platform Engineering, or Backend Engineering with high‑scale data needs).

Nice to Have:

• Demonstrable experience recruiting and developing individuals into a cohesive and capable team.
• Experience with “Edge” compute or shifting data capabilities closer to the end‑user.
• Familiarity with real‑time data‑driven ML/AI implementations.
• Previous experience in the media or streaming industry (understanding the “Broadcast” mindset).
• Background in both DevOps and Data Engineering disciplines.