Scrum Master with QA Experience

Ctis - Rockville, MD

Full-time - Senior

Rockville, MD

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

We are seeking a highly skilled Scrum Master with a strong background in Quality Assurance to lead our software development teams. This unique role combines the leadership skills of a Scrum Master with the technical expertise of a Quality Assurance Analyst, bridging the gap between business needs and technical solutions. Using your leadership skills, you will work with a cross-functional team and guide the team toward continuous improvement and successful product delivery. Using your technical expertise in agile methodologies, you will ensure the quality of deliverables by integrating QA principles into the software development lifecycle. The candidate is expected to contribute 70% of the time to the Scrum Master activities, managing all SAFe® agile scrum ceremonies/responsibilities and 30% of the time QA activities including manual, automation testing configuration, development, execution, and reporting.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate and coordinate all scrum ceremonies including PI planning, Sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews/retrospective, Backlog grooming, Inspect and Adapt etc.
• Guide and coach the Scrum Team on how to use Agile practices and principles to deliver high quality products and services to our customers.
• Get team to a high performing level by recognizing areas of strength and improvement and employing appropriate coaching and development techniques.
• Responsible for ensuring Scrum is understood and the team adheres to Scrum theory, practice, and guidelines.
• Coach the Scrum team in self-organization, cross-functional skillset, domain knowledge and communicates effectively, both internally and externally working within the Scrum team.
• Work with Scrum Team, as well as internal and external stakeholders, to influence and drive decision making and support organizational project or product teams.
• Responsible for identifying when the internal and external dependencies must be met for the team to meet their PI goals.
• Facilitates preparation and readiness for Agile Release Train (ART) ceremonies.
• Supports the Product Owner in their efforts to manage the backlog and guide the team while facilitating a healthy intra-team dynamic with respect to priorities and scope.
• Resolve team impediments with other Scrum Masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organization.
• Contributes to the advancement and improvement of Agile practices within the organization.
• Guide the team in establishing normalized estimates and help the team and the ART estimate larger Features.
• Ensure the integration of QA processes such as test planning, test automation, and performance testing into the product development cycle.
• Oversee the design, implementation, and validation of programming code alongside QA teams to ensure high standards of quality.
• Create quality measurements to track improvement in products.
• Support design, development and coding of software products.
• Work closely with project team to define release and regression test plans.
• Use critical thinking to design and execute test cases and scenarios based on requirements, acceptance criteria documented in Stories and Features, and other support documents.
• Write, debug, execute, and analyze results of automated scripts and resolve issues.
• Identify, investigate, and prioritize software defects.
• Write basic SQL scripts to inspect data loaded to database in support of verification activities.
• Effectively communicate with project manager and other team members both orally and in writing.
• Share acquired skills with team members.

Requirements

• Minimum five years of proven experience as a Scrum Master with hands-on involvement in quality assurance activities.
• Excellent understanding of Scrum techniques and artifacts, and the integration of QA processes in Agile environments.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
• A bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field; Scrum Master certification preferred.
• Experience with Acceptance test driven development.
• Advanced knowledge on test automation using Selenium/Java/TestNG/Cucumber/Gherkin.
• Must be able to quickly adopt and understand automation framework and applications, perform automation activities with less guidance.
• Experience creating and setting up automation frameworks.
• Continuous integration tools for software development and build life cycles focused on automation.
• Methodical approach and attention to detail.
• Experience with Atlassian tool for project management preferred.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
• Experience in leading, coaching, and mentoring teams within a dynamic and challenging environment.
• Experience with SAFe Agile methodology and best practices.