Sr. Scrum Master
NAIC

Job Description:

The Information Technology Group of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has an exciting opportunity for a Sr. Scrum Master. This position will work on the Filings Solutions team to manage multiple Agile teams and serves as the lead for cross-team synchronization (Scrum of Scrums). The Sr. Scrum Master will apply Agile/Scrum best practices for projects and will serve as an Agile coach for other teams and the organization.

We are looking for a team member who would enjoy working for an organization that strives every day to support the public good and make a difference.Are you driven to utilize your analysis skills while delivering excellent service to build long-lasting rapport? If so, this is a perfect opportunity for you!

This position is located in the NAIC's state-of-the-art offices in Town Pavilion in the heart of downtown Kansas City which includes great restaurants and top-notch entertainment venues. This is a full-time position in a positive and flexible environment. The position will be remote, within 100 miles of the office and in-office requirements as scheduled.

Responsibilities include:

• Guides the team and organization on agile mindset, integrating frameworks/practices as needed to maximize the delivery of business value.
  
• Acts to apply mindset, values, and principles integrating agile practices in a manner to best suit the needs of the organization.
  
• Tracks and leverages key metrics and tools to champion team health, product delivery, and continuous improvement.
  
• Facilitates the application of self-organizing, self-corrective behaviors within teams, analyzing and adapting to the feedback inputs (e.g., metrics, sprint reviews, retrospectives), all for the purpose of continuous improvement.
  
• Removes impediments or guides the team to remove its own impediments.
  
• Builds a trusting environment where issues are raised without fear of blame, retribution, or judgment with an emphasis on correcting and problem solving.
  
• Champions collaborative discussion, decision making, and problem solving.
  
• Assists with internal and external to team communication, improving transparency, and radiating team information.
  
• Facilitates scrum team events to evoke participation from all team members (daily scrum, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews and demos, retrospectives) and longer-term planning exercises (such as road mapping and release planning).
  
• Supports and educates the scrum team in applying the scrum framework and agile principles and in the importance of providing vision and priorities and refining and maintaining the product backlog.
  
• Facilitates conversations and working sessions to help bring divergent opinions to consensus.
  
• Monitors and communicates team progress within team during sprints; assists with taking corrective action when needed.
  
• Clearly and consistently reports sprint results.
  
• Takes a leadership role to ensure issues are resolved and/or organizational impediments escalated in a timely and satisfactory manner, working effectively with resources on and outside the scrum team.
  
• Assimilates outside information and facilitates identification of issues that might put the quarterly plan in jeopardy.
  
• Assists in developing agile practices and procedures and ensuring they are followed by the team.
  
• Adapts practices and procedures within context of agile mindset, values, and principles as needed.
  
• Develops and maintains appropriate procedural documentation as needed.
  
• Identifies and communicates project and sprint impediments and risks; facilitates resolution where needed.
  
• Recognizes impact to other systems and teams and collaborates with peers to minimize impact, identify and plan dependencies, and monitor progress.
  
• Uses department or division tools and templates.
  
• Continually improves Scrum Master skills through education, training, certification, and engaging with fellow Scrum Masers.
  
• Addresses and resolves violations of agile values and principles.
  
• Assesses team maturity and performance; coaches team in moving through team development stages to get to high performance.
  
• Surfaces and navigates team conflict and resistance.
  
• Mentors and trains team members and staff throughout the organization on agile mindset, best practices, and techniques.
  
• Continually enhances own domain knowledge of systems, products, industry, facilitation, coaching, training, mentoring, and team coaching.
  
• Helps facilitate quarterly division planning.
  
• Mentors other Scrum Masters and works with them to provide assessments/recommendations to improve their performance and the performance of their scrum teams.
  

Skills and Abilities:

• Quality minded and looks for ways to improve quality throughout the department.
  
• Can effectively partner with manager and others in leadership roles to develop individual, team, department, and organization goals.
  
• Ability to express findings and recommendations clearly to differing levels of management, both verbally and in writing, in a professional manner.
  
• Ability to maintain a calm demeanor under stressful conditions.
  
• Ability to work collaboratively and to negotiate successful solutions.
  
• Ability to work independently.
  
• Demonstrates ability to work with multiple levels of detail, depending on the requirements of specific projects.
  
• Demonstrates excellent ability to understand the 'big picture.'
  
• Demonstrates high levels of honesty, integrity, veracity, and confidentiality, as well as professional and personal ethics.
  
• Demonstrates highly developed leadership skills, including excellent team building skills.
  
• Excellent planning and organizational skills.
  
• Has expertise in agile development concepts and practices.
  
• Knowledge of and/or experience with writing effective user stories and acceptance criteria.
  
• Must be proactive and demonstrate initiative.
  
• Must possess the ability to recognize priorities of tasks within projects.
  
• Ability to anticipate issues based on experience to help the team avoid or resolve the issues.
  
• Experience with creating scrum metrics and application of those metrics.
  
• Strong knowledge of and experience in servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency.
  
• Strong knowledge of agile/scrum principles and practices.
  
• Must have experience with all phases of development life cycle, including analysis, design, construction, implementation, and following it through to the evolution phases.
  
• Ability to train and mentor staff.
  
• Trained/skilled in adult learning concepts.
  
• Trained/skilled in professional facilitation.
  
• Trained/skilled in professional coaching concepts.
  
• Trained/skilled in team coaching concepts.
  

Minimum Education and/or experience required:

• Bachelor's degree (BA) from four-year college or university or comparable coursework and at least ten or more years of experience combined with Scrum Master role; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
  
• 5+ years of experience in the Scrum Master role. Must have a knowledge of agile development best practices.
  
• Experience in Microsoft Office Products (Outlook, Word, Excel) is required.
  
• Relevant Scrum Master certification is required
  

Preferred Experience:

• Experience with Jira is strongly preferred
  
• Relevant Agile Coaching certification is strongly preferred
  

Salary:

• Starting at $103,089 to $125,000, to be commensurate with experience
  

Interested in learning more about the amazing benefits the NAIC offers? Visit our Benefits page for more information.

The NAIC is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer

Applicants for all positions are considered without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin or ancestry, marital status, pregnancy, genetic information, military or veteran status, disability, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

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