Scrum Master

About the position

As AXA XL continues to prioritize its comprehensive capabilities, the Senior Scrum Master plays a crucial role in upholding agile principles and values within the team. Their responsibility lies in ensuring that the team follows the agreed-upon practices and processes while working on significant technology initiatives for the organization. Their influence and expertise are essential in promoting a dynamic and adaptive approach to project management, ultimately supporting the company's strategic objectives and enhancing overall operational effectiveness.

Responsibilities

• Coaches the Scrum Team and removes impediments escalating when appropriate.
• Partners with the Product Owner, IT Delivery Lead and Business leadership to form execution delivery plans and manage progress and facilitates release planning.
• Partners with a Sr. Scrum Master to support and facilitate generally one Scrum Team in various functions by fostering Agile value and practices.
• Ensure team adhere to Agile/WAgile principles. Provides coaching to the Scrum Team(s) on how to execute the Scrum framework. Teaches team servant leadership.
• Organizes and facilitates ceremonies, identifies improvement opportunities to optimize velocity and quality while mitigating risk.
• Support the integration of agile practices within traditional project management frameworks (e.g., hybrid models).
• Facilitate alignment between teams in scaled agile frameworks (e.g., SAFe, LeSS), ensuring consistent delivery across multiple teams.
• Align sprint goals and product roadmaps with broader project milestones, ensuring seamless collaboration between iterative and sequential workstreams.
• Facilitate retrospectives at both the sprint and project level, identifying opportunities for enhanced delivery and team efficiency.
• Define and monitor project KPIs, such as on-time delivery, budget adherence, and team velocity.
• Monitor project budgets, track expenditures, and ensure adherence to financial constraints.
• Provide accurate financial forecasts for resources, labor, and materials needed for both sprint and overall project completion.
• Assign team resources effectively while balancing team capacity and workload for optimal performance.
• Develop and execute risk mitigation plans, including contingency strategies for unexpected challenges.
• Act as the escalation point for critical impediments, working with leadership to resolve blockers quickly.
• Collaborate with QA teams to ensure deliverables meet agreed-upon standards and acceptance criteria.
• Ensure projects adhere to organizational governance frameworks, policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Maintain proper documentation and reporting to ensure projects are prepared for audits or executive reviews.
• Facilitate effective communication and teamwork across geographically dispersed or cross-functional teams.
• Coach teams to take ownership of their work, fostering accountability and self-organization.
• Actively mediate disputes or conflicting priorities within teams or between stakeholders.
• Serves as a filter to remove impediments to progress as identified by the team.
• Protects the team from outside influences to ensure the team remains focused on Scrum Team priorities.
• Partners with the Product Owner, Project Managers and Business leads to ensure the backlog items are prioritized based on business value and ready for the team.
• Facilitate team for better creativity and tries to improve the efficiency of the development team.
• Arranges daily stand-up/project status meetings, facilitates/schedules meetings, demo, and decision-making processes to ensure quick inspection and proper use of adaptation process.
• No direct managerial accountability. Matrixed reporting, partners with Sr. Scrum Master and PM Leads to provide coaching/feedback to ensure team success.
• Facilitating and guiding Teams to deliver expected outcomes with high quality.
• Regularly track project expenditures against the budget to ensure costs remain within approved limits.
• Identify and report any variances between projected and actual expenses, with clear explanations and corrective actions.
• Ensure projects costs are allocated correctly across workstreams, phases, or cost centers as appropriate.
• Prepare detailed financial reports for stakeholders, showing the projects' budget status, actuals and remaining funds.
• Create weekly/monthly reports highlighting project health, progress and key metrics.
• Report risks and issues with mitigation plans to keep stakeholders informed.
• Conduct formal reviews to ensure deliverables quality, obtain approvals and assess risks.
• Record stage gate decisions and monitor performance to maintain consistency across phases.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related discipline with some work experience in IT development as a Scrum Master.
• First level Scrum Master certification (CSM, PSM I)

Nice-to-haves

• Knowledge of numerous well-documented patterns and techniques for filling in the intentional gaps in the Scrum/Waterfall approach.
• Knowledge of other Agile/WAgile approaches like Kanban is a plus.
• Experience in implementation of any Cloud Migration projects is a plus.
• Experience or exposure to leading software development teams in technologies such as Azure, Salesforce etc.

Benefits

• Competitive retirement savings plan
• Health and wellness programs
• Wide range of learning opportunities for professional skills development