Scrum Master

Location: Chicago, IL Description: Our client is currently seeking a Scrum Master.For immediate consideration please forward a copy of your resume to This job will have the following responsibilities:

• Act as a Scrum Master for 2+ Agile teams simultaneously.
• Provide leadership, direction and coaching to the team by encouraging them to adopt and mature good Scrum processes according to the Scrum Guide.
• Create an environment whereby the team is motivated, self-organizing and self-sufficient.
• Organize and facilitate effective Scrum meetings: backlog grooming, Sprint planning, daily Scrum, Sprint review, and Sprint retrospective.
• Encourage your teams to routinely inspect and adapt.
• Assist the team in establishing a consistent and predictable team level cadence (predictable velocity)
• Identify and facilitate the removal of team impediments and escalate as appropriate.
• Work with and coach Product Owners to develop, manage, and continuously groom the team's product backlog.
• In partnership with the Product Owner, track and communicate to Stakeholders information such as team velocity, Sprint/release progress, impediments, team successes, etc.
• In coordination with Project Managers, facilitate cross-team coordination and collaboration when projects require it.
• Assist Product Owners and Project Managers with planning and grooming activities.

• 1-3 years of experience in a software development environment preferably involving cross-team dependencies.
• 1-3 years of experience owning and managing customer expectations, project schedules, status and reporting and change management.
• 1-3 years of experience as a Scrum Master.
• Have led teams in a large, complex enterprise environment where successful projects potentially involve more than 1 Scrum team.
• Ability to apply a wide variety of patterns and techniques to enable the team to achieve success
• Servant Leadership - Able to garner respect from your teams, lead and demonstrate value-add principles, and willing and able to get your hands dirty to get the job done.
• Communicative and social skills - Able to communicate well with your Teams.
• Enthusiasm and high-energy.
• Continual improvement - Constantly learning new tools and techniques to grow your craft, yourself, and your Teams.
• Attitude of transparency - Desire and ability to bring disclosure and transparency to the business about development and grow trust between the business and development.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering or related field, or related experience.
• Fully educated and conversant on the Scrum process according to the Scrum Guide.
• A thorough understanding and appreciation for the Agile values and principles.

• Backlog grooming and relative estimating
• Release planning
• Sprint planning
• Scrum metrics such as Sprint burndown, release burnup, & velocity, to name a few
• Sprint review best practices and techniques
• A variety of retrospective techniques

• Conflict resolution: Able to facilitate discussion of issues and different approaches and alternatives, and effectively resolve issues in a timely manner.
• Facilitate: Able to lead and demonstrate value-add principles to a team.
• Assertive: Able to ensure Agile and Scrum concepts and principles are adhered to, be a voice of reason and authority, and make the tough calls.
• Situationally aware: Be the first to notice differences and issues as they arise and elevate them as appropriate.
• Attitude of empowerment: Able to lead a team to self-organization.

• Scrum Master certification
• Experience with 1 or more scaled Agile frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, DAD, Nexus)
• Have acted as a traditional project and/or program manager in the past.
• DevOps experience: continuous integration, continuous build, continuous delivery tools and techniques.
• ATDD, BDD, TDD, and pair programming, and other eXtreme Programming (XP) practices
• Lean Agile development concepts
• Prior experience using Jira
• Experience working in a highly regulated environment
• Experience working in a financial services organization