JOB DESCRIPTION

Job title Team Leader Operations Engineer

Proposed
Job family Operations Engineer D
band

Job purpose
The aim of the role is to work as part of a team on a regular shift pattern to provide
24/7/365 operational support, incident management and stakeholder communication for the
systems used to produce, publish and serve content for a range of BBC platforms (possibly
including across mobile, tablet, desktop, and IPTV).

Work involves end-to-end business support for systems and the applications for the related
Editorial/Production and Development teams, and is shift based to reflect the nature of the
operational work.

Direct the actions of the operational team, act as an escalation point, or technical advisor,
and will inform or make decisions affecting the team’s focus and actions.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

 Line manage and lead an operational team across one or more operational
functions, assuming all appropriate authority and accountability
 Able to both use a diverse range of monitoring tools to identify and diagnose
complex service impacting issues across a range of technologies and platforms, and
also use operational experience to enhance team capabilities in this area.
 Technical analysis and resolution of a diverse range of incidents impacting live
services. Accountable for the team response to service disruption, and also
supports proactive measures aimed at preventing recurrence
 Use expertise in problem solving techniques to lead a logical and methodical
approach to translate alarms from components into real-world impact, and lead a
best practice response to complex issues either familiar, or entirely new.
 Enforcing the accurate and detailed logging of all incidents accurately; including all
technical means employed to define the fault and remedial action taken.
 Managing incident and escalating as appropriate and as per defined processes. Act as
final on-site authority by using experience or knowledge to advise team decisions
 Implementing appropriate contingency procedures in response to planned or
unexpected events
 Thorough handover of incident and environmental information through shift
changes to colleagues within the team, with overall responsibility for the handover,
and ensuring improvements are implemented.
 Keep abreast of operational changes in a fluid environment, ensuring that individual
and team actions are taken in line with current best practice, specifically ensuring
the team are clear, through shift meetings or otherwise.
 Use strong communication skills to articulate accurate information to technical and
non-technical audiences in the course of addressing an incident, and in related
actions afterwards. This includes composing comms to large, diverse audiences and
acting as the point of contact for operational management.
 Able to discuss or convey complex technical systems both verbally in meetings, calls
etc, and non-verbally in incident tickets and documentation.
 Representing the operational team in regular meetings, stand ups, and post incident

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JOB DESCRIPTION

reviews. Conducting meetings that explore operational incidents.

 Accountable for training junior members of the team, and for providing guidance to
all team members as appropriate, or advising where it will be found
 Provides overall leadership of responses to complex and/or major issues, and
handles escalations from junior operational team members
 Expected to contribute technically or procedurally to the development of the
operations team, with a view to efficiency or technical improvements
 Arbiter of good problem solving practice, ensuring logical and sensible team activity
 Able to consider feedback on team and individual performance and make
conclusions on development opportunities
 Adaptable, and able to operate effectively in changing environments
 Responsible for maintaining regular 1-2-1 meetings with team members, ensuring
performance is discussed, and identifying areas of focus for team members.
 Keeping track of team ability via a skills matrix, and ensuring it is up-to-date
 Often directly tasked with implementing improvements identified from incidents,
procedural or otherwise
 Will assist the Operations Manager with recruitment, conducting interviews and
assessment days, and providing input into decisions
 Responsible for performance management, and tasked with tackling issues arising in
line with HR guidance
 Asked to represent the team, department, or BBC in a range of events – giving
overviews of the team, and presenting the principles of the role.
 Ensure that the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work Act, Working Time
Directive and other workplace related legislation are observed ; responsible for
ensuring that risk assessments are completed, appropriate and meet BBC
standards; responsible for ensuring appropriate method statements are reviewed
and fit for purpose

Knowledge, skills, training and experience

Desired Knowledge & Experience
 Broad technical knowledge, including high-level understanding of varied and complex
systems built on different platforms, from many separate components
 Experience of guiding colleagues within multi-platform, large scale and complex
environments
 Excellent grasp of good problem-solving principles, and logical judgement
 Experience of the principles of monitoring and interacting with a range of
applications and services
 Experience in logging and managing incidents in an operational environment, the
typical challenges, and guidance required to enforce good practice
 Familiarity with using a range of diagnostic and monitoring tools
 Accomplished at communicating effectively with external providers and internal
partners, including senior stakeholders
 Troubleshooting and diagnosing defects in complex systems with an appreciation of
real-world impact, and able to lead the team in line with good operational
protocols.
 Ensuring the team create, maintain, and enhance supporting documentation as the
need arises
 Leader in the principles of prioritisation according to service impact, and able to

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lead by example when required to work under pressure

 Proven ability to share knowledge with team members for mutual gain
 Training skills required to improve the skills of junior members of the team,
including guidance on management principles for SOEs
 NVQ level 5 or above in a relevant technical discipline
 Team leadership experience
 Excellent knowledge of BBC health and safety standards, approaches and processes
and other relevant regulatory requirements

Advantageous Knowledge & Experience

 ITIL practice and processes
 Experience in media and creative environments
 Delegation and strong interpersonal skills
 Skills development strategies.

Job impact
Decision making

The role holder will report into the Manager Operations Engineering.

Team Lead Operations Engineers (TLOE) make frequent decisions towards managing the
team response to an incident. This includes acting as final authority for decisions on
prioritisation, escalation, and technical response, as well as handing escalations from junior
team members. These decisions have an impact on live products or services, either
consumed by the audience or fulfilling an internal BBC function, and the consequences can
be felt very widely in both cases. The nature of these decisions feeds into monthly reports
and determine compliance or otherwise with departmental or team objectives and SLAs.
The TLOE will also decide on the extent to which any incident is communicated, and is
responsible for assembling any comms necessary to large, diverse, and senior audiences.

The role holder will work with a large number of internal and external teams and
individuals in the course of operating the BBC’s services, products, and platforms. Most of
these will have different perspectives on those services, including end users, management,
and support. Principle relationships and interactions include:

- Manager Operations Engineering – The TLOE will work in close partnership with
the MOE, who has accountability for a number of operational teams. The MOE will
require the TLOE to implement strategic decisions, provide sound feedback ‘from
the ground’, and work in partnership with other TLOEs to ensure consistency
across teams
- Senior Operations Engineer. The TLOE will work alongside the Senior Operations
Engineer (SOE) with whom they will run the operational team, working in close
partnership. The TLOE represents the line mgmt. authority on the team but will
work with the SOE to develop a joint leadership style which supports business

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requirements and ensures the team runs well

- Service Managers – The TLOE will work with Service Managers (SM) by way of
escalation, or as the intermediary between operational and product teams, and will
provide technical guidance as necessary, or ensure improvements are
communicated and implemented. SMs will often need TLOEs to represent
operations in meetings, and will work with them to arrange onboarding sessions and
overviews of new products.
- Systems Engineers – TLOEs will interact frequently with Systems Engineers in the
course of fixing issues, and also in a knowledge sharing capacity
- Third Party. Chiefly operational teams at business partners in both a break/fix
capacity and also in regular relationship management meetings
- Senior Management – Both operational or otherwise the TLOE will be the most
senior member of the operational team present out of normal office hours, and will
therefore interface with senior management as necessary.

Scope

Finance: The job role has no financial responsibility, although TLOEs manage the team rota and
consequently award overtime. They also administer team training, which has a financial
impact, and make purchasing recommendations for the MOE to consider.

Line Management: The TLOE has line management responsibility for several operational team
members, including all standard practices; 1-2-1 meetings, performance reviews, PDRs,
development planning, sickness and leave management, resource management, day-to-day
instructions.

Ad-hoc teams: May participate in working groups around particular projects, or represent the team
as a subject matter expert for a particular service or technology. Will frequently be asked
to lead intra-team working groups and participate in incident-response conferences, and
enforces best practice when the rest of the team is asked to do the same.

Other information
For Reward team use only
Job Code
Definition: Content

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

Division Design and Engineering

Reports to (title) Engineering Operations Manager
Location base London

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Additional job specific responsibilities and accountabilities

Part of an operational management team of between 8 and 12 people, which is led by an
Operations Manager.

Direct reports:
The Support Team Leader normally line manages up to 15 support staff, but will be operationally
responsible for all staff on duty on a given day.

Indirect:
Whilst covering team operational duties in a major production centre, the Support Team Leader
will often direct between 30 to 60 support staff covering a 24 hour operation. Many of these team
members will be line managed by fellow Support Team Leaders.

Recruitment: As part of the operational management team, the Support Team Leader is
expected to participate in recruitment of support staff and trainees, selection decisions and
engagement of staff within area of responsibility.

Engagement of Specialist Contractors: This will normally be carried out by the Operations
Manager but Team Leaders may be asked to contribute to this process.

Health & Safety: Ensures that all the requirements of statutory and BBC safety regulations are
fully met, including adherence to the BBC’s Health & Safety policy and ensuring that safety
inspections are appropriately resourced.

3rd Party Relationships: Not responsible directly for contracts, but must be familiar with their
contents and be able to make service delivery decisions based on knowledge of those contracts.

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