Agile Team Lead

As a Team Lead at Kainos, you will be responsible for leading an agile team to deliver high quality software solutions that meet client and user needs. You will get the best from our talented teams by creating a positive and creative culture and a productive working environment. You will empower and support your team to perform well, learn and grow in a manner that is consistent with Kainos company values. You will foresee and remove blockers and effectively manage risks and issues at a team level. You will work closely with other Agile Team Leads and stakeholders to ensure targets are met at the right time under the support and guidance of a Delivery Manager. You will take on broader management responsibilities beyond the agile team as required and actively contribute to the Management capability. 

The successful candidate will:

• Have a strong background as a technical scrum master: You need to be experienced and knowledgable about the full lifecycle of software development from scratch in large scales. 

• Establish ways of working to enable an agile team to plan, forecast and deliver against a product backlog.

• Act as a role model for collaborative behaviours, agile values and professionalism.

• Lead ceremonies, retrospectives and continuous improvement initiatives; applying previous knowledge, experience, and industry best practices in agile delivery.

• Put people first & develop others – You’ll manage, coach and develop a small number of staff, with a focus on managing employee performance.

• Write reports, provide data, forecasts and progress updates to your counterparts as well as senior figures of leadership and/ governement on the customer side, in order to inform planning initiatives and ongoing progress.

• Facilitate workshops and discussions to understand and effectively capture requirements to achieve a joint understanding of needs.

• Establish and maintain constructive and collaborative relationships with the client, other suppliers and third-party stakeholders.

• Ensure stakeholders can access current and accurate data on the status of the team’s delivery and that technical quality standards are followed.

• Support the Delivery Manager in ensuring projects deliver the agreed outcomes within budget. This includes responsibility over commercial aspects such as: costs and expenses reports, time sheet delivery and monitoring, etc.   

• Be highly flexible (including willingness to work away from home base and travel across the UK to meet with the customer, in average 1 day per week).

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

• Eligibility to a security clearance- you must be a UK citizen who has been living in the UK for the past 5 years consecutively, without long periods abroad. 
• Proven and solid experience as a technical scrum master in projects directly related to governmental healthcare organizations in the UK, such as: Ministry of Health, NHS, hospitals, etc. This experience must include projects related to SW developement and/ or digital transformations projects (data migration projects alone are not enough).
• Solid managerial skills, both as a direct manager (in charge of growth and performance), and as a project manager- leading the delivery targets with the hands-on SW teams.
• Commercial experience- knowing how to work with a multi- million budget, report on costs and expenses, handle time sheets and estimate needed manpower for the project, basic understanding of revenue and how to facilitate upscaling opportunities with the customer. 
• Be able to lead delivery in different Agile methodologies, according to what fits the project best.

• Persuasive and effective communicator with strong negotiating skills. 

• Evidence of leading continuous improvement initiatives.

• We are passionate about developing people – a demonstrated ability in managing, coaching and developing members of your team and wider community.

• Experience of facilitating workshops and discussions.

• Ability to forge effective working relationships with stakeholders.

• Maintain effective and efficient delivery from your team during periods of remote working.

DESIRABLE

• Good understanding of technology, digital services and trends.

• Have experience of working with user research, design and data analytics expertise.

• Understanding of a range of planning and reporting methods common to project delivery.

• Scrum Master or similar Agile delivery certification.