Consultant, Agile Leader (Release Train Engineer)

If you're passionate about being part of a dynamic organization that enables a Fortune 100 company with nearly $70 billion in annual sales to drive innovation and adopt new technologies that deliver business results, then Nationwide's Technology team could be the place for you! At Nationwide , "on your side" goes beyond just words. Our customers are at the center of everything we do and we're looking for associates who are passionate about delivering extraordinary care.

This role will work a hybrid schedule coming into the Columbus, Ohio office 2 days per week on Wednesdays & Thursdays.

Position Overview

This is an exciting opportunity to join Nationwide's Annuity Modernization Program, driving a Tier 1 priority multi-year program focused on delivering business outcome uplift through updating technology solutions and practices.

We are seeking a uniquely experienced individual with working knowledge of Scrum Master / Release Train Engineer (RTE), and Delivery Leader (project manager) on a large, multi-year program. This role will coordinate delivery across multiple teams and value streams, drive SAFe and Agile ways of working, and provide coaching, metrics, and insights to program leadership.

The ideal candidate blends strong servant leadership, program delivery expertise, and hands-on SAFe Release Train Engineer experience, including facilitation of Scrum of Scrums and big room / PI planning events.

Key Responsibilities

• Agile Team & Train Leadership
  
  • Act as Release Train Engineer (RTE) for a large Agile Release Train, coordinating planning and execution across multiple teams and lines of business.
  • Participate in line Scrum ceremonies (Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Reviews, Retrospectives) and ensure they are outcome-focused and value-driven.
  • Remove impediments and escalate blockers that impact delivery, partnering with leaders to drive resolution.

• Program & Release Coordination
  
  • Lead Scrum of Scrums, cross-team syncs, and other coordination forums to manage dependencies, risks, and cross-cutting issues.
  • Plan and facilitate PI Planning / big room planning events, ensuring clear objectives, aligned priorities, and committed plans across teams.
  • Coordinate release calendars, milestones, and delivery timelines across multiple teams and stakeholders.
  • Partner with Product Management, Architecture, and Delivery Leaders to align roadmaps, scope, and capacity.

• SAFe & Agile Coaching and Uplift
  
  • Coach teams, Product Owners, and leaders on SAFe, Scrum, and Lean-Agile principles and practices.
  • Champion continuous improvement through retrospectives, experiments, and adoption of Agile best practices.
  • Support the development of Agile maturity roadmaps and uplift plans for teams and the broader program.
  • Mentor less experienced Scrum Masters and help establish communities of practice.

• Metrics, Reporting, and Insights
  
  • Define, collect, and maintain Agile and delivery metrics (e.g., velocity, predictability, flow, cycle time, defect trends, PI objectives progress).
  • Provide clear, data-driven insights and dashboards to program leaders to support decision-making and course correction.
  • Identify trends and systemic impediments using metrics and qualitative feedback, and drive targeted improvement actions.
  • Communicate status, risks, and dependencies clearly and transparently to stakeholders at all levels.

• Stakeholder Management & Communication
  
  • Build strong relationships with business partners, technology leaders, and other stakeholders across multiple lines of business.
  • Facilitate alignment on priorities, scope, and trade-offs, ensuring teams are focused on the highest-value work.
  • Communicate complex delivery topics in a clear, concise manner tailored to executives, leaders, and teams.

Skills & Experience

• 7+ years of experience in Agile delivery roles, including Scrum Master and/or Release Train Engineer (or equivalent program-level Agile role).
• Demonstrated experience leading large, multi-team or multi-year programs using SAFe or similar scaled Agile frameworks.
• Hands-on experience facilitating:
  
  • Scrum ceremonies at team level
  • Scrum of Scrums or similar cross-team coordination
  • PI Planning / big room planning and other major program increment events

• Proven ability to work across multiple lines of business and technology domains, coordinating dependencies and aligning priorities.
• Strong coaching skills with a track record of uplifting Agile maturity for teams and leaders.
• Deep understanding of Agile / Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe principles, roles, and practices.
• Experience with metrics and reporting tools (e.g., Jira, DevOps, PowerBI, etc.) and creating actionable dashboards for leadership.
• Excellent facilitation, communication, and negotiation skills; able to navigate ambiguity and drive alignment among diverse stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to remove obstacles, manage risk, and maintain delivery momentum.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience in large, regulated, or complex enterprise environments (e.g., financial services, insurance, banking).
• Background working with distributed or hybrid teams across multiple locations and time zones.
• Experience mentoring and developing other Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Agile practitioners.
• Familiarity with Lean Portfolio Management, value stream mapping, and portfolio-level planning.
• Exposure to continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices and DevOps culture.

Recommended Certifications

While not all certifications are required, the following are highly recommended and will be considered strong differentiators:

• SAFe Certifications
  
  • SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) - strongly preferred.
  • SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) - a plus, especially for candidates driving broader transformation.

• Scrum / Agile Certifications
  
  • Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM) - Scrum Alliance.

• Additional Relevant Certifications (Nice to Have)
  
  • PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) - PMI.
  • Lean / Kanban certifications (e.g., KMP).

Personal Attributes

• Servant leader mindset with a focus on enabling teams to succeed.
• Highly collaborative and comfortable working across organizational boundaries.
• Confident facilitator with strong presence in large group settings (big room planning, PI events, executive briefings).
• Outcome-oriented, pragmatic, and comfortable working in complex, evolving environments.

#LI-AC1

Job Description Summary
If you're enthusiastic about delivering secure technology solutions to support a company providing extraordinary care to its customers, then Nationwide Technology is the place for you. Nationwide's industry-leading technology workforce embraces an agile work environment and a collaborative culture to deliver outstanding solutions and results. If that sounds like something you aspire to, we want to hear from you!

As an Agile Lead, you will coach a robust, self-organized Agile Team(s) responsible for building software solutions with the best technology, processes, and tools. You will collaborate to deliver business outcomes, using appropriate software delivery practices (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, Lean) to continuously improve software delivery efficiency, and quality. You will play a key role in guiding delivery from idea inception to implementation and participate in user communities to learn and implement optimal practices.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Influences, coaches and mentors team members on Agile practices and principles.
• Removes impediments to the team's progress; escalate obstacles requiring outside resolution. Identifies risks and issues that might have an impact on delivery and provides thought leadership, facilitation, and communication on a mitigation strategy.
• Responsible for applying secure software and systems engineering practices throughout the delivery lifecycle to ensure our data and technology solutions are protected from threats and vulnerabilities.
• Collaborates at the highest level to prioritize work to maximize value towards business outcomes.
• Collaborates with the Agile Team(s) to provide guidance in the areas of analysis, design, development, testing, automation, and deployment while ensuring the usage of the best capability practices.
• Guides and enables DevOps, DataOps, AI/MLOps through the adoption and refinement of Agile practices on our most complex and strategic efforts.
• Monitors and reports on team progress and performance through enterprise and industry metrics while maintaining data quality supporting metric accuracy.
• Collaborates with senior leadership on demand and financials. Actively participates in variable staffing functions for the line.
• Facilitates team cadences on business critical, complex efforts (e.g., retrospective, daily standups, and show-and-tell meetings) to encourage collaboration, communication, and feedback within the team; promote a learning culture and challenge the team to be innovative.

May perform other responsibilities as assigned.

Reporting Relationships: Reports to Technology Manager/Director.

Typical Skills and Experiences:

Education: Undergraduate studies in computer science, management information systems, mathematics or related field is preferred. Agile certification (Certified ScrumMaster - CSM, SAFe ScrumMaster Certification - SSM, Professional ScrumMaster Certification - PSM) and proven experience across multiple teams is a plus.

Experience: Typically, Six years of experience in Agile including three years as an Agile Leader or similar role. Strong technical expertise in one or more Agile practices and frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. Plus, a technical background in Software Engineering. Three or more years working with ALM tools and Microsoft Office Suite.

Knowledge, Abilities and Skills: Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor team members and peers. Ability to manage multiple teams and lead cross team initiatives. Strong candidates will put the team first, have excellent communication skills, robust problem-solving ability, conflict resolution skills and be active in the industry. Insurance and/or financial services industry knowledge a plus.

Other criteria, including leadership skills, competencies and experiences may take precedence.

Staffing exceptions to the above must be approved by the hiring manager's leader and Human Resource Business Partner.

Values: Regularly and consistently demonstrates the Nationwide Values.

Job Conditions:

Overtime Eligibility: Not Eligible (Exempt)

Working Conditions: Hybrid to normal office environment. Associates may have on-call responsibility after normal working hours and/or on weekends.

ADA: The above statements cover what are generally believed to be principal and essential functions of this job. Specific circumstances may allow or require some people assigned to the job to perform a somewhat different combination of duties.

Benefits

We have an array of benefits to fit your needs, including: medical/dental/vision, life insurance, short and long term disability coverage, paid time off with newly hired associates receiving a minimum of 18 days paid time off each full calendar year pro-rated quarterly based on hire date, nine paid holidays, 8 hours of Lifetime paid time off, 8 hours of Unity Day paid time off, 401(k) with company match, company-paid pension plan, business casual attire, and more. To learn more about the benefits we offer, click here.

Nationwide is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive culture where everyone feels challenged, appreciated, respected and engaged. Nationwide prohibits discrimination and harassment and affords equal employment opportunities to employees and applicants without regard to any characteristic (or classification) protected by applicable law.

NOTE TO EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES:

We value the partnerships we have built with our preferred vendors. Nationwide does not accept unsolicited resumes from employment agencies. All resumes submitted by employment agencies directly to any Nationwide employee or hiring manager in any form without a signed Nationwide Client Services Agreement on file and search engagement for that position will be deemed unsolicited in nature. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is subsequently hired as a result of the referral or through other means.

Nationwide pays on a geographic-specific salary structure and placement within the actual starting salary range for this position will be determined by a number of factors including the skills, education, training, credentials and experience of the candidate; the scope, complexity and location of the role as well as the cost of labor in the market; and other conditions of employment. If a Sales job, Sales Incentives, based on performance goals are possible in addition to this range. Note on Compensation for Part-Time Roles: Please be aware that the salary ranges listed below reflect full-time compensation. Actual compensation may be prorated based on the number of hours worked relative to a full-time schedule.

The national salary range for Consultant, Agile Leader : $118,000.00-$222,000.00

The expected starting salary range for Consultant, Agile Leader : $118,000.00 - $178,000.00