Senior Scrum Master

Our client in the financial services and insurance space is looking for a Senior Scrum Master who can turn delivery from busy to genuinely valuable. This is a role for someone who coaches teams to own their work, clears the path, and uses data, not noise, to make flow, quality, and predictability better.

You will sit with Agile teams and Product Owners across internal and external business units, helping them ship solutions that the business actually needs. Expect SAFe at program level, real dependencies, and teams that are ready to become more self-managing.

What you will do:

·        Facilitate and collaborate between Agile teams and Product Owners of internal and external business units to develop solutions that support business needs.

·        Coach and support the Product Owner, Business Analyst, Architects and delivery teams in effective backlog management, prioritisation, refinement and readiness.

·        Support the team in achieving business objectives by improving planning, flow, collaboration, and visibility of delivery risks and dependencies.

·        Build effective relationships across the team, Product Owner, stakeholders and supporting teams, while promoting transparency around delivery progress, quality, capacity, risks, and dependencies.

·        Exhibit Lean-Agile leadership and servant leadership principles.

·        Monitor and use delivery metrics to identify opportunities to improve flow, predictability, quality, and delivery effectiveness.

·        Help the team focus on daily and sprint goals in the context of Program Increment (PI) Objectives.

·        Teach problem-solving techniques and help teams become self-managing and solution oriented.

·        Facilitate all team ceremonies, including Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Backlog Refinements, Retrospectives, and PI Planning sessions.

·        Eliminate impediments and escalate organisational blockers when necessary.

·        Foster a culture of quality, accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and high performance by coaching and supporting teams in developing effective ways of working.

·        Coordinate inter-team dependencies and represent the team in Scrum of Scrums (SoS) and Agile Release Train (ART) activities.

·        Help the team understand estimation techniques and value-based prioritisation.

What you bring:

·        Degree or Diploma in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.

·        Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), or an equivalent Agile certification.

·        8+ years as a Scrum Master or related experience.

·        Proven experience leading Agile teams in complex digital transformation environments.

·        Strong practical experience with Scrum, Kanban, SAFe and Lean-Agile principles.

·        Experience facilitating continuous improvement through delivery metrics, team feedback and empirical data.

·        Experience working with distributed, hybrid and cross-functional teams.

·        Good understanding of software development lifecycles, technical delivery practices, dependencies, risks and delivery constraints.

·        Proficiency with Agile delivery and collaboration tools such as Jira, Microsoft 365, Teams, Miro, Lucidchart and similar applications.

·        Strong understanding of Agile principles, flow, value delivery and continuous improvement.

·        Sufficient technical understanding to engage effectively with Developers, Architects, BAs, QA and other technical stakeholders, including basic knowledge of APIs, integrations, architecture and modern software development practices.

·        Demonstrated interest in emerging technologies, AI-enabled ways of working and evolving Agile delivery practices.

How you show up:

·        Strong servant leadership and stakeholder engagement, with the ability to build trust and foster collaboration across teams and organisational levels.

·        Excellent facilitation, coaching, mentoring and conflict-resolution skills, so teams become increasingly self-managing.

·        Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, focused on root causes and sustainable solutions.

·        Highly self-motivated, adaptable, resilient and resourceful in complex, changing environments.

·        Strong verbal and written communication.

·        Able to operate in fast-paced, complex technology delivery environments and to manage multiple priorities and competing deadlines.

·        Strong grasp of Agile metrics, flow, capacity, dependencies, value streams and continuous improvement, and the ability to use data to spot bottlenecks and delivery risks.

·        You encourage teams to use appropriate automation, AI-assisted tools and data-driven insights where these improve effectiveness and outcomes.

·        A data-driven mindset: you can interpret and communicate insights from dashboards, analytics and predictive reporting.

·        Able to support organisational and team change linked to new technologies, ways of working and digital transformation.

·        Digital transformation awareness and a continuous improvement mindset.

·        Familiarity with modern software engineering practices and AI-assisted development approaches.

If you want to coach high-performing teams inside a complex financial services and insurance environment, and you already know how to make Scrum, Kanban and SAFe work in the real world, this is the brief.