Lead Scrum Master

Project description

Our Client is a comprehensive-stack digital banking solutions provider empowering banks and financial institutions to scale and modernise at speed. The Lead Scrum Master owns Scrum effectiveness across multiple squads within the Risk & Delivery function, ensuring consistent cadence, ceremony quality, and improvement discipline. Working closely with Product Owners, Scrum teams, the Chief Scrum Master, Engineering, and technology partners, this role coaches other Scrum Masters, resolves cross-squad impediments, and standardises delivery practices across the area. The role applies scaled-agile approaches where appropriate to keep distributed teams aligned on release plans and delivery commitments, and ensures Agile delivery artefacts meet the standards required to deploy applications to production in a regulated financial-services environment.

Responsibilities

• Own Scrum effectiveness across multiple squads within the delivery area, ensuring consistent cadence, ceremony quality, and improvement discipline.
• Coach Scrum Masters and squad leads on facilitation quality, team maturity, and handling of complex delivery situations, modelling a servant-leadership approach.
• Identify and resolve cross-squad impediments, dependency issues, and systemic blockers affecting delivery flow or release confidence.
• Partner with Product Owners to ensure backlogs are groomed and maintained, sprint goals are clear, and planning quality supports predictable delivery.
• Facilitate Scrum-of-Scrums forums across distributed teams to surface cross-team dependencies and align release plans with technology partners.
• Compare delivery health across squads using shared metrics (velocity, sprint/release status, predictability) and target interventions where needed.
• Standardize minimum expectations for ceremonies, working agreements, metrics usage, and retrospective follow-through across the delivery area.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and DevOps to improve planning interfaces, dependency handling, and CI/CD-aligned release readiness.
• Lead time-bound improvement efforts for squads falling below expected delivery health or predictability thresholds, applying scaled-agile practices (e.g., Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, SAFe) where relevant.
• Escalate material risks, recurring bottlenecks, and structural process issues to delivery leadership with evidence-backed recommendations.

SKILLS

Must have

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6–9 years of experience as a Scrum Master or Agile delivery lead, including leading multiple (3+) concurrent teams in a fast-paced services, enterprise, or banking environment.
• Demonstrated experience applying scaled-agile approaches (e.g., Scrum of Scrums, LeSS, SAFe) across distributed teams.
• Strong track record in backlog management, velocity/burndown tracking, and task-level estimation practices.
• Working knowledge of software delivery practices, including Test-Driven Development, Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery, user story writing, and BDD/ATDD.
• Proficiency with project and collaboration tooling such as JIRA, Confluence, TFS, Trello, or Rally.
• Proven ability to coach Scrum Masters and squads on facilitation quality, self-management, and delivery maturity.
• Skilled at diagnosing cross-team impediments and designing practical, evidence-based interventions.
• Working knowledge of the Agile delivery artefacts and governance standards required to deploy applications to production within a regulated financial-services environment.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience aligning Product Owners, Scrum teams, the Chief Scrum Master, and Engineering/Delivery leaders around shared priorities and trade-offs.

Nice to have

• Agile/Scrum certification appropriate to a lead-level role (e.g., Advanced CSM, PSM II/III, or a SAFe Practitioner/SPC credential).