Join us as an apprentice at the BBC to give yourself the opportunity to kick-start your career in a job you'll love. We’re committed to your skills and talent development. You’ll learn on-the-job, developing your knowledge and skills in an area that interests you, whilst working towards your apprenticeship qualification with one of our learning providers.
As an apprentice within our team, you will be right at the heart of the BBC's digital first world, developing and maintaining the systems that audiences rely on every single day.
Imagine this: The code you write helps deliver the suspense of EastEnders on iPlayer, the freshest tracks on Sounds, the minute-by-minute drama of a breaking news story, or the thrill of a live goal on Sport.
Partnerships Team
We are the team behind iPlayer off product discovery. We work with a range of partners from Samsung, LG, Google, Amazon to surface the amazing BBC content that we have on their platforms. We power important services such as continue watching, promotional content, experimentation and we're responsible for providing iPlayer metadata to our partner platforms.
We maintain and create core services such as VOD catalogue (the content available for on demand playback), schedules (EPG data for upcoming programming), promotions (automated and manually curated sets of themed content), continue watching (continue watching your last programme from off product).
We create services which are used by millions on a wide variety of devices, so no day is never the same! We're the gateway to BBC iPlayer and drive over 20% of traffic directly to the BBC. We are a huge growth area for the BBC, so come join us on an exciting journey!
Iplayer & S TV Engineering Team
BBC Search plays a vital role in helping millions of people discover the content they love across BBC iPlayer, Sounds, News, Sport and the wider BBC. Our search platform handles millions of requests every day, and we're passionate about making search smarter, faster and more relevant for our audiences.
Our engineering team is organised into three squads: Search Catalogue, Search Intent & Retrieval, and Search Ranking, working together to deliver an intelligent, scalable and innovative search experience.
As an apprentice, you'll have the opportunity to work with modern technologies, including Apache Solr, OpenSearch, AWS, Python and Java, while gaining hands-on experience in building and improving large-scale search systems.
You'll also get exposure to some of the most exciting developments in search technology, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), semantic search and machine learning. We're exploring innovative ways to understand what audiences are searching for, recognise their intent, handle misspelt queries and deliver more meaningful results.
Search Team
We are TV Client and we build iPlayer on TV, serving over 20 million people every month. We have 6 teams in our space that look after a wide variety of different problem spaces.
They split them into two types, platform teams who build the interface with TV devices directly and experience teams who use that platform to rapidly experiment on and deliver audience features every day.
We use a wide range of technologies but with any new joiner we start small and build up, coaching and supporting every step of the way. If you are interested to learn how TVs work and how we manage to deliver experiences on them come and join us.
As a Software Engineer apprentice (SED27), this is a brilliant opportunity to learn, grow, and contribute – you will:
You’ll study for your industry recognised apprenticeship qualification, learning both on-and-off-the-job. This means on successful completion of the apprenticeship, you will be awarded with an Undergraduate Degree (Bachelor of Science with Honours) in Digital and Technology Solutions Professional (Software Engineer pathway) from a UK University, and you will be supported to find a job role within the BBC’s Technology or Product delivery teams.
We’re interested in your passion for working at the BBC and your enthusiasm for delivering world-class content and operational excellence to our audiences. We’re not focused on your qualifications; instead, we look for potential and offer you the opportunity to apply your transferable strengths and experience to work in different ways.
If you can bring some of these skills and experiences, along with transferable strengths, we’d love to hear from you and encourage you to apply:
This scheme is aimed at non-graduates.
To be eligible for an apprenticeship at the BBC, you must:
To apply for this scheme, you must also:
Here you will benefit from:
As an Apprentice you will also receive:
Don’t leave yourself wondering "what if?" this could be your chance to be part of something exciting. See yourself thriving in this role? Just click ‘Apply online now’!
You’ll create a candidate profile and answer a few questions - no CV or cover letter needed. If you're eligible, we’ll guide you through the next steps of the process and what to expect.
This is a fixed-term apprenticeship - your contract lasts for the duration of the scheme. Once you have completed your apprenticeship, you will be able to apply for any suitable open vacancies at the BBC or outside in the wider creative industry. You’ll be supported with career development, employability training, and networking opportunities to help you take your next step.
You’ll need to live within a commutable distance of where this role is based.
For apprenticeship opportunities, disabled applicants who choose to apply under the Disability Confident Scheme and who meet the minimum criteria for the role will normally be progressed to the next stage of the recruitment process. For most of our campaigns, this would be an online assessment designed to assess your skills, motivations and suitability for the role.
