Position OverviewThe Lead Agilist will support one or more Agile software delivery squads within Commercial IT, helping teams develop the behaviors, practices, and discipline required to become high-performing, self-organizing teams.
This is a
hands-on Scrum Master / Agile Coach role, not a traditional Project Manager position. The successful candidate will coach teams, facilitate Agile practices, remove impediments, improve team dynamics, and promote continuous improvement while maintaining servant leadership.
Key Responsibilities- Coach squads on Scrum principles, Agile values, and effective team behaviors.
- Facilitate Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement.
- Coach Product Owners on backlog management, prioritization, clarity, and business outcomes.
- Help teams become increasingly self-organizing and cross-functional.
- Identify and remove team impediments and escalate organizational barriers when appropriate.
- Facilitate conflict resolution and difficult team discussions.
- Help teams identify and manage cross-team dependencies.
- Create psychologically safe environments where issues can be surfaced and addressed.
- Use metrics, feedback loops, and team observations to drive continuous improvement.
- Protect teams from unnecessary external disruption while maintaining stakeholder communication.
- Promote collaboration, accountability, continuous learning, and delivery of business value.
- Introduce Kanban and other Agile practices when appropriate.
- Help teams identify, communicate, manage, and escalate risks.
Required Qualifications- 3+ years of hands-on Scrum experience.
- 5+ years of overall professional/business experience.
- Strong understanding of the Scrum Framework and Agile principles.
- Hands-on experience facilitating Agile/Scrum events.
- Demonstrated experience coaching software delivery teams.
- Experience teaching Agile concepts and mentoring team members.
- Strong oral and written communication skills.
- Experience building or improving high-performing teams.
- Strong servant-leadership orientation.
- Experience identifying and removing team impediments.
- Experience handling conflict and facilitating difficult discussions.
- Ability to coach teams toward self-organization rather than directing their work.
- Understanding of Product Backlog management and Product Owner coaching.
- Experience using metrics and feedback loops for continuous improvement.
- Understanding of software development lifecycle disciplines.
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline.
Preferred / Additional Experience- Kanban, Scrumban, XP, or other Agile methodologies.
- CI/CD concepts.
- Test-Driven Development and automated testing.
- DevOps and pipeline automation.
- Cross-team dependency management.
- Organizational Agile coaching.
- Experience working in complex enterprise technology environments.
Ideal Candidate ProfileThe strongest candidates will demonstrate
real hands-on Scrum Master/Agile Coach experience, including team coaching, facilitation, servant leadership, conflict resolution, impediment removal, metrics-driven improvement, and coaching teams toward self-organization. Candidates whose experience is primarily traditional project/program management should not be considered a strong fit.
