Scrum Master

The Opportunity:

A Scrum Master IV is a true leader who has mastered the Agile framework (Scrum/Kanban), and has the ability to provide coaching, guidance, training, and mentoring to Agile teams on best practices so that they grow to become a mature Agile team with a continuous improvement mindset.

Day in the Life:

• Act as a true leader and facilitator of Agile events, program events, team dynamics and team maturity.
• Drive continuous improvement within the team(s) with a focus on agile principles.
• Protect the team from interruptions and manage internal escalations as needed.
• Coach the team to consistently align with program standards.
• In partnership with the Product Owner and Business System Analyst, develop a clear and concise product backlog items and consistently review. 
• Partner with the Product Owner and Agile team to understand, identify, and document business value through clear, testable stories.
• As a trusted partner, engages and educates team members, product stakeholders, and leaders on the business value benefits of Agile best practices.
• Advanced facilitation skills to lead positive and productive Agile events/ceremonies within a timebox for one or more Agile team: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum/Stand-Up, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and assists in Refinement activities.
• Takes ownership and accountability for the effectiveness of the Agile team and champions change when the team may need to pivot or re-prioritize. 
• Elicit feedback from the team to identify and resolve impediments, monitor progress and performance, and to always keep a pulse on where the team is at in regards to their Team Working Agreement: Team Rules, Definition of Ready (DoR), and Definition of Done. (DoD).
• Proactively continues their education on Agile techniques then coaches the team on best practices that will advance and improve the organization.
• Maintains an innate awareness of business relationships, dependencies, risks, and impacts across products and platforms. 
• Excellent interpersonal skills, with ability to gain consensus through mediation, find innovative solutions to challenges, identify issues and provide potential solutions, and influence cross-departmental decisions.
• Communicate effectively in both verbal and written formats and give presentations utilizing various audiovisual support aids.
• Utilizes in-depth understanding of Agile practices, patterns and techniques to formulate self-organizing and highly collaborative teams.
• Mentor less tenured Scrum Masters in the areas of Scrum, Kanban, Agile, refinement, story splitting, relative sizing, velocity, retrospection, conflict resolution, and other techniques.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business Management, or equivalent combination of education and experience required. Agile Certification preferred (work experience is considered). 
• 10+ years of hands-on experience preferably as a Scrum Master or similar role.
• Experience in systems or financial services environment, card payments, banking, contact center, new product development, information technology or process re-engineering preferred. 
• Agile certification is required.
• Advanced experience with Agile tools within Azure DevOps (ADO), or similar applications (JIRA, RALLY, etc), around Epics, Features, User Stories and Tasking and guiding others on those tools and best practices.
• Technically savvy on software development terminology such as API’s is a plus.
• Experience with managing large scale technology projects (software/hardware).