Scrum Master

Role:  Scrum Master
Location: Sacramento, CA (Hybrid Role )

Employment Type: Contract

Key Responsibilities

• Facilitate Agile ceremonies, including Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement.
• Coach and mentor Agile teams on Scrum principles, Agile methodologies, and continuous improvement practices.
• Work closely with Product Owners to manage and prioritize product backlogs, user stories, and sprint objectives.
• Identify, track, and remove impediments affecting sprint execution and team productivity.
• Monitor sprint progress, velocity, burndown charts, and other Agile performance metrics.
• Coordinate with business analysts, developers, QA engineers, architects, DevOps teams, and project managers.
• Ensure sprint deliverables meet defined acceptance criteria and quality standards.
• Manage dependencies, risks, blockers, and cross-team coordination.
• Facilitate communication between technical teams, business stakeholders, and senior management.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of overall IT experience, with at least 5+ years of experience as a Scrum Master in Agile environments.
• Strong understanding of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, and iterative software development methodologies.
• Experience facilitating Scrum ceremonies and managing multiple Agile teams.
• Hands-on experience with Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps, or similar Agile management tools.
• Experience managing sprint backlogs, user stories, velocity, burndown charts, and release schedules.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, leadership, and conflict-resolution skills.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional teams in complex enterprise IT environments.
• Ability to identify delivery risks, resolve impediments, and drive teams toward successful outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with the State of California, or other California state agencies.
• Prior experience on public-sector healthcare IT projects, including Medicaid, Medi-Cal, MMIS, eligibility, claims processing, or healthcare enterprise systems.
• Experience supporting large-scale IT modernization and legacy application transformation initiatives.
• Familiarity with California state IT project governance and oversight processes.
• Experience with SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), Lean Agile, and enterprise Agile delivery.
• Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), or SAFe Scrum Master certification.
• Understanding of SDLC, CI/CD, software testing, release management, and DevOps practices.