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Posted 29 June, 2026
BBC

Lead Project Manager

BBC
London, GBR, W1A 1AA,Cardiff, GBR, CF10 1FT,Salford, GBR, M50 2QH Full Time
Salary: £70,000 to £85,000 Annually
Reference: 44692

Job Details

Job band: E
Contract type: Permanent, full-time
Department: Strategy and Transformation
Location: London, Salford, Cardiff
Salary range: £70,000 -£85,000 depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

The closing date for applications is 13th July 2026

Purpose Of The Role

The Lead Project Manager will play a central role within the BBC’s Generative AI Team, leading a small number of medium to large-scale innovation projects. This role will work across business, data and delivery teams to take projects from a prioritised hypothesis through to a validated hypothesis, pilot delivery and effective handover to the business for scaling. The role requires strong project discipline, sound judgement and the ability to operate confidently in a fast-moving, evolving and matrix-managed environment.

WHY JOIN THE TEAM

The Generative AI Programme, part of the Strategy & Transformation team, helps the BBC realise value from rapidly evolving AI capabilities in a way that is practical, responsible and aligned to the BBC’s public service mission. The team’s activities include enabling adoption of AI tools across the organisation; fostering innovation; finding opportunities to use AI to work more efficiently as an organisation, and leading the BBC's engagement on the wider AI issues that shape our operating environment

YOUR KEY RESPONSIBILITIES AND IMPACT

  • Lead a small portfolio of medium to large-scale innovation and optimisation projects within the GenAI team, ensuring they are well-scoped, well-governed and delivered to agreed outcomes.
  • Oversee end-to-end delivery, from an initial prioritised problem space through discovery, validation and pilot execution, to successful handover into the business for scaling.
  • Work closely with business leaders, process experts, data engineers, change specialists, and where needed legal and procurement colleagues, to coordinate delivery and resolve issues at pace.
  • Build strong relationships across a wide range of stakeholders in a matrix-managed environment, enabling teams across divisions to plan, prioritise and deliver work effectively together.
  • Establish and maintain clear project gates, decision points, delivery plans, resource assumptions and risk management, ensuring stakeholders have clarity on progress, dependencies and trade-offs.
  • Support rapid experimentation while maintaining appropriate project rigour, with a clear focus on key deliverables, business readiness and adoption.
  • Work closely with the GenAI team’s senior leaders s to ensure projects are delivered in a way that supports wider programme priorities and sustainable business change.

Your Skills and Experience

ESSENTIAL CRITERIA

  • Strong experience of complex and innovation projects in large organisations from early-stage problem definition through structured experimentation to pilot delivery and effective handover into operational teams.
  • The ability to balance pace, rigour and risk in the delivery of complex initiatives, ideally in areas involving new technologies or organisational change.
  • Experience of creating delivery environments that support collaboration, learning and continuous improvement, particularly where innovation or experimentation is involved.
  • Strong project management skills, including experience of working in cross-functional teams to deliver high quality planning, governance, risk management, resource oversight, dependency management and reporting against key milestones and decision points.
  • Excellent communication and influencing skills, with the ability to articulate complex delivery issues, diverse stakeholder considerations, subject matter expert viewpoints and project choices clearly and credibly.

Desirable criteria

  • Experience working in environments that involve emerging technologies or innovation.
  • Experience working with multidisciplinary teams that include business process redesign, data science and change management functions.

Disclaimer

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.

Please note: If you were to be offered this role, the BBC will conduct Employment screening checks which include Reference checks; Eligibility to work checks; and if applicable to the role, Safeguarding and Adverse media/Social media checks. Any offer made is conditional on these checks being satisfactory.

Before your start date, you may need to disclose any unspent convictions or police charges, in line with our Recruitment policy. This allows us to discuss any support you may need and assess any risks. Failure to disclose may result in the withdrawal of your offer.

For any general queries, please contact: [email protected]

We are unable to accept applications via CV and only applications made online will be considered. Please click on the APPLY NOW button to proceed with your application.