Job OverviewOur client is staffing Task Force Raptor, a systems development and IT modernization effort in direct support of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). WHCA is the joint-service Department of Defense organization, aligned under the White House Military Office, that delivers secure voice, video, data, and audiovisual communications for the President, the Vice President, the White House staff, the United States Secret Service, and Presidential emissaries - at the White House, at Camp David, and anywhere in the world the mission travels. The systems this team builds are used to run that mission.
The Automated Workflows workstream takes the manual, paper-and-email processes the agency depends on and turns them into governed, auditable, automated workflows - equipment accountability, personnel and access actions, mission tasking, service requests, change and approval chains, and readiness reporting. Processes that run today on spreadsheets, email threads, and institutional memory become process flows, business rules, routing and approval logic, notifications, escalations, and system integrations that are fast, consistent, and traceable.
As the
Senior Scrum Master for the Automated Workflows workstream, you own the delivery cadence for a cross-functional team of workflow developers, business analysts, and test engineers replacing manual, paper-and-email processes with automated ones. You are the person who keeps the team predictable in an environment where badge lead times, accreditation gates, classified spaces, and change control make every dependency harder than it looks on a board. You will coach the team, coach the Government Product Owner, mentor less-experienced Scrum Masters, and report delivery honestly to program and Government leadership.
Work is performed onsite in the Arlington, Virginia area, Monday through Friday during core business hours, in accredited Government spaces alongside the Government Product Owner and WHCA technical staff. The team delivers in sprints against a prioritized backlog, with real users a short walk away and short feedback loops. This is a funded position on a ten-year IDIQ vehicle running through 2030 and expected to extend beyond it - the roadmap is long, the funding is in place, and the mission does not go away with an administration.
This position requires a Yankee White clearance (Presidential Support Duty). Candidates must be U.S. citizens who currently hold an active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility and who are able to obtain and maintain Yankee White.
We are looking for:- A servant leader who coaches rather than administers - the kind of Scrum Master engineers ask for by name
- Someone who can run ceremonies for technical people who are skeptical of ceremonies, and make them worth the time
- Comfortable holding a Government Product Owner accountable to a groomed, prioritized backlog - diplomatically
- Able to see cross-workstream dependencies coming before they turn into schedule slips
- Able to report velocity, burn-down, risk, and bad news to senior Government leadership in plain English
- Someone who wants to mentor junior Scrum Masters and raise the Agile maturity of the whole program
- Patient with the realities of a cleared environment - air-gapped test data, restricted tooling, and processes that cannot be short-circuited
Responsibilities and DutiesThis role provides onsite support in the Arlington, Virginia area, Monday through Friday during core business hours. Duties will include:
- Facilitate all Agile/Scrum ceremonies for the Automated Workflows team, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
- Work directly with the Government Product Owner to maintain, prioritize, and refine the product and sprint backlogs, and to establish achievable, well-defined sprint goals.
- Support the team in workload estimation, capacity planning, and sprint commitment.
- Identify, track, escalate, and remove impediments affecting team delivery - including the access, environment, test-data, and accreditation blockers that are common in this environment.
- Track sprint progress, deliverables, dependencies, risks, impediments, and action items, and keep the board an accurate reflection of the work.
- Maintain Agile delivery metrics including velocity, sprint completion, burn-down and burn-up charts, and cycle time, and use them to drive conversations rather than to grade the team.
- Facilitate communication and coordination among developers, engineers, analysts, testers, the Product Owner, program management, Government stakeholders, and other delivery partners.
- Support release planning, milestone tracking, roadmap development, and program status reporting.
- Facilitate retrospectives and continuous-improvement activities that measurably improve team effectiveness, quality, and predictability.
- Promote collaboration, transparency, accountability, and self-organization within the team, and help resolve conflict before it becomes attrition.
- Maintain Agile documentation, including sprint records, decisions, risks, issues, lessons learned, and improvement actions.
- Ensure Agile practices integrate cleanly with applicable federal, cybersecurity, quality, configuration-management, and change-management requirements.
- Serve as an Agile coach to development, engineering, and IT operations staff, and to Government stakeholders new to Agile delivery.
- Coordinate dependencies and delivery activities across multiple Agile teams and technical workstreams, including Systems Integration, Mission Dashboards, and Platform Services.
- Support program governance, risk management, and executive-level reporting as required.
- Coach and mentor less-experienced Scrum Masters and team members on Agile principles and delivery practices.
Required Skills and Experience - U.S. citizenship is required. Candidate must be eligible for a Yankee White clearance (Presidential Support Duty) in accordance with DoD Directive 5210.55 and DoD Instruction 5210.87, including a favorably adjudicated Tier 5 investigation.
- Candidate must currently hold an active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility and must be able to obtain and maintain Yankee White.
- Ability to work onsite in the Arlington, Virginia area, Monday through Friday during core business hours.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience.
- Minimum of 7 years of relevant professional experience, including significant experience supporting Agile technology delivery teams.
- Minimum of 4 years of experience serving as a Scrum Master, Agile Team Lead, or in a comparable Agile delivery role.
- Demonstrated experience managing or coordinating complex, multidisciplinary Agile teams and multiple concurrent workstreams.
- Strong working knowledge of Scrum, Kanban, Lean Agile, and software or IT service delivery lifecycle practices.
- Hands-on experience with Agile project-management tooling such as Jira, Azure DevOps, Rally, or an equivalent platform.
- Demonstrated ability to build and maintain Agile delivery metrics - velocity, burn-down and burn-up, sprint completion, and dependency tracking.
- Strong facilitation, organization, problem-solving, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Professional interpersonal and written communication skills, and the judgment to operate discreetly in a sensitive, high-visibility environment.
- Demonstrated conflict-resolution skills and experience coaching teams and stakeholders through Agile adoption.
Desired Skills and Experience - Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), or equivalent Agile certification.
- Project Management Professional (PMP) or an equivalent project management certification.
- Experience supporting federal Government IT, cybersecurity, cloud, DevSecOps, or digital modernization programs.
- Experience working within scaled Agile environments (SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, or similar) involving multiple teams or workstreams.
- SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE), Advanced Scrum Master (SASM), or Agile coaching certification.
- Familiarity with workflow automation platforms such as ServiceNow, Microsoft Power Platform, Appian, or Pega - enough to know when an estimate is optimistic.
- Experience coordinating delivery against configuration management, change control, and authority-to-operate milestones.
- Prior experience supporting WHCA, the White House Military Office, DISA, the Executive Office of the President, or another Presidential Support Duty mission.
- Active Yankee White clearance, or a Tier 5 investigation adjudicated within the last three years.
- Experience working in DoD environments subject to RMF, eMASS, DISA STIGs, and Impact Level 5 or 6 hosting requirements.
- Experience in a fast-moving, small-team environment where the customer sits with the delivery team.
- Prior military service, particularly in a joint communications, signal, cyber, or C4 role.
