Senior Scrum Master

At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.

What’s the role?

The Data Engineering team at NM is growing and looking for an experienced Scrum Master to help: Build a culture of continuous improvement. Foster intellectual curiosity and a growth mindset. Encourage empathy, understanding and a relentless pursuit of excellence.

The Scrum Master is a key contributor to our development team’s success because they drive principles of empiricism and transparency throughout the development process by means of coaching and servant leadership for the advancement of the team. The role demands a passion for agile practices, a drive to build partnerships with engineers and Product Owners, and a deep set of soft-skills including facilitation, influencing and negotiation.

Responsibilities:

• Act as scrum master for one or more engineering teams.
• Embody servant leadership and partner with the engineering team and the Product Owner (PO) to drive the delivery of working software and technology platforms.
  • Ensure transparency between all team members and stakeholders on the state of the backlog, team performance, delivery and work plans
  • Serve as a liaison between stakeholders the development team and other management
  • Identify opportunities for experimentation and growth
  • Drive adoption of best practices including Definition of Done, retrospectives, cross training etc.
  • Help the PO and engineering team deliver high quality outcomes by:
    • Collaborating with the PO to ensure backlog is prioritized in a fashion that minimizes delays and manages dependencies.
    • Actively contributing to the refinement of work in the backlog by analyzing requirements and acceptance criteria
    • Guiding and coaching the team to refine, estimate and plan work in the backlog and program increment
    • Leveraging best practices (concepts like ‘Definition of Ready’ and ‘Definition of Done’)
    • Identify and help resolve risks and impediments
    • Work to recognize and facilitate resolution of dependencies between engineering teams both internal and external
    • Driving effective communication and transparency between all team members, leadership and stakeholders
    • Creating and maintaining all Product Lifecycle documents and project KPIs on a weekly basis
      • Create, implement and maintain procedures documentation
      • Create release notes for internal/external communications
      • Monitor deliverables and ensure transparency of status and artifacts
      • Communicate priorities and status to stakeholders
    • Partnering with PO to lead the planning of product release plans and set expectations of delivery.
• Embracing and embodying the philosophy of continuous improvement both personally and as a member of a team.
• Providing information to Management on patterns and trends in the industry and competitors.

Ideal candidate would bring the following:

• Minimum 5 years working with agile teams in software development and awareness/understanding of concepts including:
  • DevOps concepts and approach (CI/CD, automation etc.)
  • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), microservices etc.
  • Data warehousing, ETL, data modeling and BI/Analytics practices
• Experience with JIRA and JIRA Align or similar work management tools.
• Experience working in scaled agile environments leveraging one of the scaled frameworks (Nexus, SAFe, LeSS etc.).
• Financial or insurance industry experience.
• Passion for operational excellence, problem solving, and ownership in accomplishing challenging goals.

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We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Req ID: 27175
Position Type: Regular Full Time
Education Experience: Bachelor’s Desired
Employment Experience: 3-5 years
Licenses/Certifications:

FLSA Status: Exempt
Posting Date: 11/18/2019