Scrum Master / Agile Delivery

Job Description

In this role, you will be supporting both our Platform Engineering and Database Teams. Working alongside a Senior Product Owner in our internal Technical Services train, you will play a critical role ensuring we continue to deliver the necessary infrastructure and services that support our  business and product delivery teams. This is an exciting Scrum Master role, which will see you working on the latest tech during a time of tech transformation and investment. 

Beyond the usual mechanics of the Scrum Master role of i.e. planning in the work and unblocking issues etc. you will be keeping the team focused on the right priorities and protecting them from interruptions. Alongside strategic delivery these teams field a large volume of support requests and BAU activities, so managing competing priorities and conflicts between short term requests and long term objectives is key. There is real depth to this role and you will be supporting aspects of Delivery and capacity planning as you create short and longer term team plans and the necessary resource allocations to support the Product Owner.

You will ideally be an experienced Change professional with a strong grasp of Agile principles, and with proven ability to incorporate and improve Agile ways of working (often) against some more traditional Project delivery.

Working with Product Owners and Product Managers to secure Project Commitments and Resource is key. So too is the ability to speak to stakeholders in the business and foster support from your Development Teams. As such, an outgoing personality and natural ability to develop and drive personal relationships within professional parameters will be highly regarded.

Typical duties include:

• Sets up and facilitates the ceremonies for the team. These would include Daily Stand-Up, Sprint Planning, Demo and Retrospectives
• Continuously evaluates the effectiveness of the team’s delivery process and looks for ways to improve, working closely with the Product Owner and the team to realise these
• Understands the principles of "Flow" and getting work items "done". Values this and embeds this thinking in the team
• Removes impediments quickly and seen as a member of the team that can help address these issues, as well as helping the team try and address issues on their own where appropriate - maintaining a view on flow
• Support the team during horizon planning sessions and ensure the flow of the session works for the team to achieve the right outcomes
• Prepares the team ahead of the session so they know what to expect and appropriate pre-work is done (establishing delivery objectives, sprint goals, priority support tickets)

Candidates with a blend of the following skills will be very highly regarded:

• Agile and Scrum Certifications
• Good working knowledge of Agile concepts and agile tooling that facilitates it
• Comfortable blending Agile and Waterfall methodologies and be comfortable using KANBAN
• Strong communicator with the ability to influence across a broad stakeholder group
• Experience working with teams delivering infrastructure level changes
• Proven capability to assess and keep assessing what is important at any given time in order to prioritise and effectively manage expectations
• Energises the team, keeps spirits and momentum high