Scrum Master

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Act as the Scrum Master for several concurrent Scrum teams.

• Facilitate various Agile ceremonies including sprint planning, daily Scrums, backlog refinement, sprint reviews/demos, and retrospectives.

• Oversee the daily health of various Jira boards, managing workflows, issue hygiene, sprint setup, dependencies, dashboards, filters, and reporting views.

• Collaborate with Product Owners to sustain prioritized, actionable backlogs that include acceptance criteria, dependencies, sequencing, and sprint readiness.

• Monitor commitments, progress, blockers, carryover, scope changes, defects, and delivery risks; facilitate their resolution or escalation.

• Coordinate dependencies across Scrum teams as well as shared engineering, data, architecture, UX/HCD, QA, security, platform, and delivery functions.

• Lead Scrum-of-Scrums, cross-team planning, dependency reviews, and discussions around release readiness.

• Utilize metrics such as velocity, throughput, cycle time, lead time, work in progress, burndown/burnup, aging work, and carryover to foster continuous improvement.

• Guide teams on Scrum values, self-management, estimation, work decomposition, sustainable delivery, definitions of ready/done, and retrospectives.

• Advise Product Owners and stakeholders on backlog quality, prioritization, acceptance criteria, sprint goals, scope trade-offs, and team engagement.

• Eliminate impediments and collaborate with program leadership to address organizational, resource, approval, environment, access, and cross-team barriers.

• Link sprint execution to broader milestones and release objectives while ensuring transparency about capacity, constraints, dependencies, and forecast confidence.

• Prepare Jira-based delivery views for program leadership, highlighting progress, risks, dependencies, decisions, and forecast confidence.

• Mentor less experienced Scrum Masters or Agile practitioners and contribute to ceremony guides, Jira standards, metrics definitions, and team-health practices.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in business, information technology, engineering, computer science, management, or a related field; equivalent professional experience may be accepted.

• Over 7 years of progressive experience in Agile delivery, Scrum, software/digital delivery, project delivery, or related fields, with substantial hands-on experience as a Scrum Master.

• Proven experience managing multiple Scrum teams or workstreams with competing priorities, cross-team dependencies, shared resources, and varying levels of Agile maturity.

• Advanced practical experience with Jira, including board configuration, workflows, filters/JQL, dashboards, sprint management, issue hygiene, dependencies, reporting, and troubleshooting.

• Experience in facilitating sprint planning, daily Scrums, refinement, reviews/demos, retrospectives, Scrum-of-Scrums, and other Agile coordination forums.

• Strong understanding of Scrum roles, events, artifacts, commitments, empirical process control, team self-management, iterative delivery, and the boundaries of a Scrum Master.

• Experience utilizing delivery metrics to identify trends, diagnose flow or predictability issues, and coach teams toward measurable improvement.

• Background in coordinating cross-team dependencies and impediments involving engineering, data, architecture, UX/HCD, QA, security, platform, product, or other shared disciplines.

• Excellent facilitation, conflict-resolution, stakeholder-management, and communication skills.

• Preferred certification: CSM, PSM I or higher, SSM, PMI-ACP, or a similar Agile credential.

• Ability to successfully complete and maintain the necessary federal background investigation, suitability, and Public Trust requirements and comply with applicable VA security, privacy, training, records-management, and data-handling requirements.

• Desired: Over 9 years of Agile or digital delivery experience, including 5+ years in a Scrum Master, Senior Scrum Master, Agile Delivery Lead, or comparable role.

• Desired: Previous experience with the Department of Veterans Affairs, VHA, federal, healthcare, or large regulated enterprise delivery.

• Desired: Background in supporting three or more concurrent Scrum teams and facilitating cross-team planning or Scrum-of-Scrums at scale.

• Desired: Advanced experience with Jira/JQL, Confluence, Azure DevOps, GitLab, Miro, Microsoft Teams, Power BI, or similar tools.

• Desired: Advanced Agile certification.

• Desired: Experience in coaching teams through maturity improvements, recovering underperforming teams, enhancing predictability, reducing work in progress, or resolving recurring carryover and dependency challenges.

• Desired: Experience in supporting digital modernization, workflow transformation, data/analytics, automation, AI-enabled products, or multidisciplinary technology initiatives.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

• Generous paid time off and holiday schedule.

• Opportunities for professional development and training.

• Flexible work arrangements and supportive work-life balance initiatives.