Senior Agile Lead

SENIOR AGILE LEADER — SUT

Department Engineering / Technology — SUT

POSITION SUMMARY

The Senior Agile Leader (AL) for SUT serves as the primary point of continuity and coaching across all active SUT delivery teams. This role is responsible for the health of sprint execution, quarterly planning (QVP), delivery metrics, and team enablement. The Senior AL operates with a dual focus: driving near-term delivery visibility and accountability while building long-term team autonomy and agile maturity. A key differentiator for this role is a forward-looking orientation toward AI — both as a practitioner who actively uses AI tools to enhance their own effectiveness, and as a coach who identifies and promotes meaningful AI adoption opportunities within and across SUT teams. This is a hands-on facilitation and coaching role that requires deep familiarity with Agile at scale, Jira, and the delivery rhythms of SUT.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Tax Tech Daily (TTD) Facilitation

• Facilitate the Tax Tech Daily as the central point of continuity across all active SUT teams each sprint.

• Maintain awareness of each team’s sprint goals, progress, and capacity constraints.

• Challenge vague or undefined goals and ensure sprint commitments are clear and achievable before the sprint begins.

• Monitor goal health throughout the sprint; proactively engage Tech Leads to rescope goals or identify recovery paths when teams are tracking behind.

• Surface blockers, risks, and dependencies raised in the TTD and drive them to resolution or escalate as appropriate.

Sprint Ceremonies and Continuous Improvement

• Follow up with Tech Leads after retrospectives to understand team sentiment, themes, and action items.

• Provide coaching on retrospective structure and effectiveness, ensuring retro outcomes are documented and followed through.

• Attend sprint reviews across SUT teams.

• Identify patterns and themes across teams that indicate process gaps, delivery risks, or opportunities for improvement.

• Escalate issues and concerns to leadership when they exceed team-level resolution.

Delivery Health

• Analyze sprint and delivery metrics across SUT teams to identify trends, outliers, and risks.

• Maintain visibility into team throughput, goal completion rates, and sprint health.

• Use available tools including Claude skills and AI-powered HTML dashboards to surface delivery signals and support informed decision-making.

• Continuously explore how AI tools can improve the quality, speed, and depth of delivery health analysis.

QVP Planning and Coordination

• Own the end-to-end QVP process for all participating SUT teams.

• Create and facilitate QVP planning sessions and prep sessions each quarter.

• Ensure Tech Leads and Product Owners are prepared for QVP readouts, with Product owning the readout itself.

• Leverage available tooling — including AI-assisted planning tools and capacity calculators — to help teams prepare realistic commitments without over-committing.

• Ensure all teams submit capacity data, document dependencies and blockers, and follow required ProdOps procedures including mandatory field completion on Jira epics.

• Guide teams through the planning timeline from kickoff through commitment lock.

• Collect and maintain capacity data in the SUT QVP Confluence page and submit to SharePoint for the QuickSight Capacity Dashboard.

• Track quarter-over-quarter epic commitment and delivery trends; flag carry-over patterns and help teams address root causes.

Team Coaching, Self-Sufficiency, and Process Support

• Coach SUT teams and Tech Leads on Agile practices, sprint ceremonies, estimation, and ways of working with an emphasis on building team autonomy.

• Develop and share tools, templates, guides, and self-service resources that enable teams to operate independently and reduce dependency on the Agile Leader over time.

• Support teams in the consistent application of Definitions of Done, Definitions of Ready, and sub-task standards.

• Monitor adherence to sub-task best practices and CapEx tracking requirements.

• Assist teams through the SOP renewal process and support the creation of new SOPs where needed.

• Identify where process or tooling gaps are affecting team performance and recommend solutions.

Jira, Tooling, and Enablement

• Support SUT teams in following established Jira board standards, workflows, and automation configurations.

• Identify opportunities to introduce or assist teams in creating new Jira automation to improve efficiency and adherence to standards.

• Maintain and update shared SUT resources including the TTD Lucid Chart, capacity calculator, and QVP Confluence page.

• Ensure SUT teams have access to the documentation, templates, and tools needed to operate consistently each sprint and quarter.

AI Adoption and Enablement

• Actively use AI tools (including Claude and Claude skills) in day-to-day work to improve facilitation, analysis, reporting, and coaching effectiveness.

• Serve as an AI adoption advocate for SUT teams — identifying practical, high-value opportunities where AI can reduce manual effort, improve decision-making, or accelerate delivery.

• Partner with Tech Leads and team members to introduce AI-assisted workflows, templates, and automations into team rituals and processes.

• Share learnings, prompts, and reusable AI tools across teams to build collective capability and reduce duplication of effort.

• Stay current on AI tooling available within Sovos and proactively recommend adoption where it aligns with team needs and organizational standards.

• Help teams build healthy AI habits — including critical evaluation of AI outputs and appropriate use within delivery workflows.

Seasonal Readiness

• Lead SUT Seasonal Readiness coordination for major tax events including tax season, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and other high-volume periods.

• Partner with Tech Ops and Product to ensure all teams are prepared, risks are documented, and readiness status is tracked and visible.

• Maintain the Seasonal Readiness Confluence page and ensure all teams complete required preparation ahead of critical windows.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• 5+ years of experience in an Agile coaching, Scrum Master, or delivery leadership role within a software engineering organization.

• Demonstrated experience facilitating Agile ceremonies at scale across multiple teams simultaneously.

• Strong working knowledge of Jira — including board configuration, workflows, automation, and reporting.

• Experience owning or supporting quarterly planning processes (PI Planning, QBR, or equivalent).

• Proven ability to coach teams and Tech Leads on Agile practices while building toward team autonomy.

• Ability to analyze delivery metrics and translate data into clear, actionable insights for teams and leadership.

• Practical experience using AI tools (such as Claude, ChatGPT, or equivalent) to enhance personal productivity, analysis, or communication in a professional context.

• Demonstrated curiosity and comfort with emerging AI capabilities, with the ability to evaluate and apply them pragmatically within delivery workflows.

• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to engage confidently with both delivery teams and senior stakeholders.

• Experience maintaining shared team resources in Confluence or similar documentation platforms.

Preferred

• Experience promoting or leading AI adoption initiatives within a technology team or organization.

• Familiarity with AI-powered workflow automation, prompt engineering, or custom AI tooling (e.g., Claude skills, GPT integrations).

• Experience in a SaaS, tax technology, or compliance software environment.

• Familiarity with CapEx tracking requirements and sub-task standards in an engineering context.

• Experience with capacity planning tools and dashboards (e.g., QuickSight, Lucid Chart).

• CSM, SAFe, or equivalent Agile certification.

• Experience coordinating seasonal readiness or high-stakes operational windows.