Scrum master

Strong IT background with experience managing agile teams, healthcare is good but not required, at least a BA in relevant field, strong communications and leadership skills, self starter, driver. Preferred certifications in Project Management, Scrum Master or related certifications for agile project management. Strong MS office skills, good working knowledge of agile tools and other PM tools.

What experience will set candidates apart from one another?  – IT experience in various industries with working knowledge of tools, ability to translate business talk to Development and vice versa. Upbeat personality with solid communication skills. Understanding how to escalated effectively, understanding how to explain what is important, facilitate conversations in the right way. This has to be a culture fit.

 Essential Duties: 

• Doing everything possible to ensure delighting customers Clear and concise communication across teams, leadership and peers
• Guiding the team(s) and the organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values to delight customers
• Guiding the team(s) on how to get the most out of self-organization
• Guiding the team(s) on self-organizing to fully realize the potential of Agile/Scrum frameworks
• Assessing the Scrum Maturity of the team(s) and organization and coaching the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization
• Removing impediments or guiding the team(s) to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.
• Building a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis of healing and problem solving. 
• Facilitating getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work. • Facilitating discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution 
• Supporting and educating the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog. • Providing all support to the team(s) using a servant leadership style whenever possible, and leading by example 
• Perform as an evangelist for Optum’s internal implementation of SAFe (SAFe + PLM) 
• Helping the department and Optum mature out of legacy processes • Mentor junior Scrum Masters towards improvement Required Skills/Experience: 
• First level Scrum Master certification (CSM, PSM I, SAFe Agilest or Practitioner)
• 5 years of experience in a Scrum Master role for a software development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory. 
• Good skills and knowledge of servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and increasing transparency 
• Knowledge of numerous well documented patterns and techniques for eliciting change in team behavior (example: numerous Burndown techniques, numerous Retrospective formats, handling bugs, etc.) Preferred Skills/Experience (Any of these is a plus):
• Second level Scrum Master certification (CSP, PSM II, SPCT 4++)
• Knowledge of other agile approaches: XP, Kanban, Crystal, FDD, etc.
• Knowledge and/or experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games 
• Applicable knowledge of the technologies used by the team (.Net, Java, or other web development languages) • Previous experience as a development team lead • Excellent communication and mentoring skills 
• Contributions to the public around agile practices