Scrum Master

Job Title: Scrum Master

Location: Austin, TX – Hybrid

Job Duties & Responsibilities:

1. Scrum Facilitation and Team Leadership

•  Ensure that Scrum processes, ceremonies, and practices are properly followed across Agile project team(s).
• Lead and coordinate daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint reviews, retrospectives, backlog refinement, release planning, and other required Agile events.
• Observe quality criteria, ensuring deliverables are complete, tested, and production-ready.
• Provide senior-level coaching for Scrum teams to follow Agile values, principles, and practices, supporting continual improvements in team performance and maturity.
•  Proactively identify and remove impediments to team progress.

2. Planning, Delivery, and Continuous Improvement

• Collaborate with Product Owners to ensure sprint commitments are realistic, backlog items are well-defined, and delivery cycles align with business priorities.
• Drive process improvement initiatives, helping teams adapt workflows, reduce cycle time, improve velocity and quality.
• Facilitate coordination of Scrum teams, technical leads, and stakeholders.

3. Stakeholder Engagement and Communication

• Maintain open communication with business owners, product managers, project sponsors, and technical leadership to align expectations, report progress, and resolve conflicts.
• Track Agile metrics to support transparency and continuous improvement decisions.
• Act as a senior Agile advocate sharing best practices and coaching.
• Experience coaching Product Owners on Agile responsibilities for backlog creation, refinement, and prioritization; writing effective user stories and acceptance criteria; coordination and timely completion of user acceptance testing efforts.

4. Strategy and Task Execution

• Plan and accomplish goals independently; handle multifaceted problems with creativity and latitude expected of senior practitioners.
• Argue for necessary changes to workflows, team composition, sprint plans, and organizational practices to improve quality and timeliness of deliverables.
• Provide guidance and leadership helping elevate overall Agile effectiveness across the organization.

• 8 Required Demonstrated expertise in Scrum and Kanban with the ability to coach teams on Agile principles and implementation.
• 8 Required Proven ability to facilitate all Scrum ceremonies across multiple teams or large projects.
• 8 Required Experience working with product owners, technical leads, senior IT stakeholders, and external vendors.
• 8 Required Skilled in tracking and applying team performance metrics (e.g., velocity, burn-downs) to drive continuous delivery improvements.
• 8 Required Skill in fostering a collaborative, self-organizing, and high-trust team environment.
• 8 Required Excellent verbal and written communication skills to provide clear guidance, reports, and/or documentation.
• 5 Required Proficiency with Agile tools such as Jira and Confluence or similar platforms.
• 5 Required Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or equivalent.
• 5 Preferred Experience working in public-sector IT projects, particularly those involving large-scale public facing systems.
• 5 Preferred Experience coaching Product Owners on Agile roles and responsibilities