Scrum Master

Role & responsibilities

SAFe Scrum master should be able to create the environment for a team to deliver value, be highly independent, confident in their abilities and flexible enough to adapt to an evolving landscape.

• Facilitate Agile Events: Lead daily stand-ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives to ensure smooth execution.
• Coach Agile Teams: Guide teams in Agile best practices, ensuring adherence to Scrum, SAFe, or other Agile frameworks.
• Remove Impediments: Identify and address blockers that hinder team progress, collaborating with stakeholders for resolution.
• Foster Collaboration: Facilitate communication and coordination between teams, Product Owners, and leadership to ensure alignment and transparency.
• Ensure Agile Maturity: Continuously assess and improve team Agile maturity, coaching teams to self-organize and deliver value efficiently.
• Support Product Ownership: Partner with Product Owners to refine and prioritize the backlog, ensuring clarity in user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Drive Continuous Improvement: Encourage feedback loops, innovation, and iterative improvements through Inspect & Adapt workshops.
• Develop Daily Performance Management Practices: Implement and promote daily performance management techniques to track team progress, identify areas for improvement, and drive operational efficiency.
• Foster Problem-Solving and Kaizen Culture: Encourage teams to embrace a problem-solving mindset through structured approaches like root cause analysis, retrospectives, and continuous learning initiatives.
• Risk & Dependency Management: Identify risks early and work with leadership and cross-functional teams to mitigate dependencies.
• Champion Agile Transformation: Promote Agile mindset and principles across the organization, fostering a culture of agility and adaptability.
• Navigate Organizational Challenges: Manage stakeholder expectations, influence decision-making, and navigate political complexities to ensure successful Agile adoption.
• Motivate Teams: Keep the team engaged, empowered, and aligned to business goals while fostering a psychologically safe work environment.
• Facilitate Critical Conversations: Manage conflicts constructively and drive resolution through open, honest communication.
• Collaborate with Engineering Teams: Work closely with engineering teams to coach and guide them in adopting Agile Engineering practices, including Test-Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), DevOps, and automation strategies to improve software quality and delivery efficiency.

Key Skills required:

• Overall, 6-9 years experience of which minimum 5 years must have been as Scrum Master
• Hands on experience as Scrum Master for SAFe projects
• Hands on experience in Software Life Cycle (SDLC), waterfall, hybrid and agile projects
• Experience in using SAFe, Scrum, Kanban, Lean Agile frameworks.
• Experience in Project Management tools such as JIRA, ADO etc.
• Leading SAFe 6.0 and CSM / PSM equivalent certification.
• Bachelors in engineering / MBA.
• PMP certification, Agile or SAFe certification preferred.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Excellent coaching and mentoring skills