Assurant Labs has cultivated an Agile development environment where creativity and teamwork are paramount. We are looking for a positive, take-charge individual to join our growing team as a Scrum Master. You will report to the Director of Product.
Scrum Masters at Assurant Labs provide effective collaboration, facilitation, leadership and coaching skills to the Agile development process and delivery of applications, as well as enforcing the Agile tenants, removing impediments and promoting empowerment. 
Candidates must have exceptional communication skills, the ability to manage multiple tasks efficiently, excellent judgment, and the ability to be productive in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment.
Responsibilities
- Understand the difference between Agile and Scrum and be able to articulate it
- Provide team with resources, information, communication, and practical advice to enable the team to regularly deliver working software
- Manage more than one Sprint team with overlapping timelines and proactively manage dependencies within and across teams
- Facilitates: Daily scrum (stand-up), release and Sprint planning sessions, Sprint review (demo) and Sprint retrospective – ensure all participants understand the ceremony’s purpose and keep to the time-box
- Track and communicate team velocity and Sprint/release progress
- Foster and encourage conversations and collaboration – both inside and outside of team – allowing them to self-organize
- Identify and remove impediments, prevent distractions that interfere with the ability of the team to deliver the Sprint goal
- Understand and be able to articulate strategic product planning and goals in the team’s environment and progress toward them
- Supports Product Owner, ensuring the product backlog is properly refined – prioritizing to maximize value and using creative techniques for elaborating user stories to be ready for the upcoming 1-2 Sprints.
- Assist team with making appropriate commitments through story selection and task definition
- Ensure team understands the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items, and achieve this through techniques such as user story slicing and acceptance criteria
- Update Agile tracking systems to provide transparency on Product & Sprint Backlogs
- Recommend improvements and assist in changes to best practice
- Participate in the Agile community both internal to Assurant and external with other practitioners
- Enforces the values and principles of Agile by focusing on continuous learning and feedback loops
- Scrum Masters are considered part of leadership and are expected to get work done through influence without having any direct reports
Technical Requirements
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM) or Professional Scrum Master (PSM) Industry certification Required
- 3+ years of experience as a Scrum Master for software development teams
Hopes
- Agile experience within a multi-team organization
- Preferred 5-7 years of experience as a Scrum Master
- Experience driving the change from Waterfall to Agile mindsets
- Experience working with distributed, virtual teams
- Excellent communication, facilitation, and coaching skills
- Advanced understanding of Agile practices such as: retrospectives, daily standups, Sprint planning, burndown techniques
- Experience with Agile team tools such as Jira, VersionOne or TFS
- Ability to collaborate and exercise influence without authority
- 10% Travel
This position has been filled.