Scrum Master

$104,000 - $130,000/Yr

Michigan State University - East Lansing, MI

Full-time - Entry Level

Remote - East Lansing, MI

Educational Services

About the position

The MSUFCU Scrum Master role is instrumental in MSUFCU's ongoing success within the financial industry by focusing on driving member-centricity, reducing time to market, delivering valuable features, and increasing efficiencies of our digital and core banking solutions. This includes various MSUFCU owned websites, digital banking applications for web and mobile, the Episys core banking system, as well as the employee intranet and other internal systems and applications. In a fast-paced, ever-changing environment, we continually challenge ourselves to exceed objectives, remove barriers, meet crucial deadlines, and maintain multiple projects, while pioneering ways to improve efficiency and quality with a team player attitude. This role should demonstrate a passion for coaching and mentoring Agile teams with the goal of leading them to become self-directed, high-performing teams. This role is responsible for facilitating all scrum ceremonies, helping Product Owners manage backlogs, and ensuring sprint deliverables are achieved. You will have a relentless focus on continually improving the performance of the Agile team and the environment they are operating in, while ensuring appropriate governance standards are adhered to. You will spend much of your time helping other team members communicate, coordinate, and adapt. Where organizational barriers are found, you will constructively challenge these and ensure we are solving system-wide problems and not just those within Software Development. Scrum masters are expected to increase team efficiency, be an effective team motivator, and be a passionate Agile change agent who can enable scrum teams in the delivery of technical solutions with the highest business value and quality.

Responsibilities

• Orchestrates the Agile/Scrum ceremonies and processes for the department.
• Ensures positive and productive scrum ceremonies, including daily scrum, backlog refinement, Sprint planning, Sprint Reviews with demos and retrospectives for 1 Scrum team.
• Provides support to the team using servant leadership characteristics including active listening, stewardship, team building, and a commitment to continuous learning and growth of the team.
• Acts as a mentor to ensure teams work in alignment to core Agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility.
• Builds a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or judgement, with an emphasis on healing and problem solving.
• Ensures sprint plans include a healthy balance and prioritization between support work, technical debt, and new project feature innovation thus optimizing the effectiveness of the software delivery process.
• Develops, maintains and reports measurements on the health of the project, team, and sprint using agile metrics; and provide communication and updates to business stakeholders.
• Involves team in identifying and removing impediments and known risks early through analysis and prioritization; thinks outside the box on how impediments can be overcome.
• Facilitates backlog refinement and work item estimation activities ensuring stories are actionable and sized appropriately helping to optimize the team's capacity and velocity capabilities.
• Guides the team on how to use agile/scrum practices and values.
• Trains and challenges the team to break work down into smaller pieces still delivering value; assists with User Story writing using INVEST.
• Performs tasks as part of a cross functional team using agile and utilizing project management software.
• Supports the quality assurance process including validating solutions created meet acceptance criteria, ensuring standards are adhered to, validating the testing process has been completed before releasing code, and all development follows the established Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) including: analysis, design, development, code review, testing, change management, etc.
• Ensures quality is driving all aspects of the delivery lifecycle and defects are driven out as early as possible.
• Supports the user experience design process including requirements gathering, prototyping, user testing, stakeholder management, etc.
• Keeps management advised of any system, hardware or usage problem whereby the integrity and security of any of the Credit Union's systems, and/or the level of service provided to members through such mediums is compromised or otherwise impaired.
• Performs analysis to determine root cause of challenges and provides solutions for improved operational and process performance.

Requirements

• Experience as a Scrum Master or in a similar role within an Agile environment.
• Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and principles, particularly Scrum.
• Excellent facilitation, coaching, and mentoring skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively with team members and stakeholders at all levels.
• Experience with project management software and Agile metrics.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to think critically.

Nice-to-haves

• Certification as a Scrum Master (CSM or equivalent).
• Experience in the financial services industry.
• Familiarity with software development processes and life cycles.
• Knowledge of user experience design principles.

Benefits

• 100% Company-Paid Health, Dental, Vision, Life, and Long-Term Disability Premiums
• Up to 26 days of PTO within your first year, as well as Volunteer Time Off & 11 Paid Holidays
• 401(k) with an immediate 2:1 Match
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Up to 12 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave