Job Title - Lead Agilist III
Location - Cincinnati, OH 45202
Duration: 12 Months
Experience: 12+ years
Job Summary
Position Summary
The Lead Agilist will work closely with Agile Squads to promote Agile and Scrum principles, improve team effectiveness, remove impediments, facilitate collaboration, and help teams continuously improve.
This role requires a strong servant-leadership mindset, excellent communication skills, and the ability to work effectively with technical, business, and Information Security teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as a Scrum Master and Agile coach for one or more Agile Squads.
- Facilitate key Scrum ceremonies, including Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement.
- Coach Product Owners and Development Teams on effective Product Backlog management.
- Build and support high-performing, self-organizing Agile teams.
- Identify, manage, and remove team impediments and blockers.
- Coordinate with other Agile Squads, teams, and organizational stakeholders to resolve dependencies and challenges.
- Escalate issues and impediments to the appropriate teams when necessary.
- Create a trusting and psychologically safe environment where team members can openly raise concerns.
- Encourage continuous improvement through feedback, metrics, and inspect-and-adapt practices.
- Coach team members on Agile principles, Scrum practices, collaboration, and team dynamics.
- Facilitate communication and collaboration both within and outside the Agile Squad.
- Protect the team from unnecessary external interruptions and interference.
- Promote self-organization, accountability, innovation, and continuous learning.
- Support risk identification, dependency management, conflict resolution, and organizational change.
- Work effectively with Project Management, Business Analysis, QA/Testing, Development, Deployment, DevOps, and other technology disciplines.
- Apply Agile practices such as Kanban, Scrumban, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, TDD, and automated testing where appropriate.
- Work with Information Security teams and understand security-related dependencies and requirements.
- Stay actively engaged with the Agile community and continuously develop Agile/Scrum knowledge.
Required Skills & Experience
- 5+ years of overall full-time business experience.
- 3+ years of Scrum Master experience; 5+ years preferred.
- Strong understanding of Scrum Framework and Agile principles.
- Proven experience building and coaching high-performing Agile teams.
- Demonstrated ability to identify and remove team and organizational impediments.
- Experience communicating with and influencing stakeholders outside the immediate team.
- Strong facilitation, coaching, mentoring, and conflict-resolution skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Strong problem-solving and critical-thinking abilities.
- Experience presenting, teaching, and facilitating at multiple organizational levels.
- Ability to build trust and strong working relationships.
- Experience working with Information Security teams.
- Experience or exposure to AI being embedded into business or technology solutions.
- Understanding of the Software Development Lifecycle, including requirements, design, development, QA/testing, deployment, and change management.
- Working knowledge of DevOps and modern software delivery practices.
- Ability to use empirical data, metrics, and feedback loops to drive continuous improvement.
- Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, team-oriented environment.
- Strong servant-leadership mindset.
Preferred Qualifications
- Agile/Scrum certification such as CSM, PSM, SAFe, or equivalent.
- Experience with Kanban, Scrumban, XP, Mob Programming, or other Agile frameworks.
- Experience with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment and automated testing practices.
- Experience supporting enterprise-scale Agile transformations.
- Experience working in banking or financial services environments.
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate is an experienced Scrum Master / Lead Agilist who can coach teams, remove organizational blockers, facilitate difficult conversations, and drive measurable improvements in Agile team performance.
The candidate should be comfortable working across technical and business teams, collaborating with Information Security, and helping teams adopt a continuous-learning and continuous-improvement mindset
