Sr. SAFe Scrum Master

Job ID: 26-08936Location: Washington, DC / 100% RemoteContact: Paras SharmaContact Email: View email address on click.appcast.io Phone: 7328256427Company: Mindlance 100% Remote Additional Skills: Kanban lead SAFE Agile Communications Experience coaching data platform administration, DataOps, or data operations teams is highly preferred, though not mandatory. Job Summary We are seeking a Senior Scrum Master with proven experience coaching platform administration and platform operations teams within a Scaled Agile environment. This role is not intended for a Scrum Master whose experience is limited to traditional software development teams. We need someone who understands how to guide teams whose work includes a blend of planned and unplanned work - operational support, incidents, maintenance, service requests, platform reliability, compliance, and continuous improvement. The ideal candidate has experience coaching teams that support one or more of the following: • Cloud data and analytics platforms • Business intelligence platforms • API and interoperability platforms • Data services platforms Experience coaching data platform administration, DataOps, or data operations teams is highly preferred, though not mandatory. Situational Context Within our D&A organization, multiple administration and operations teams are responsible for supporting critical enterprise data and interoperability platforms. These teams do not always conform to the standard Scrum patterns typically employed by feature delivery teams. As such, there is a need for a senior-level coach who can assist both teams and leaders in adopting fit-for-purpose ways of working. The goal is to enhance flow, transparency, prioritization, predictability, and responsiveness, all while avoiding the imposition of a rigid agile framework that may not align with the unique requirements of operational platform work. Key Responsibilities • Coach platform administration and operations teams on agile ways of working appropriate for platform support and operations environments • Help teams balance planned work and unplanned work, including incidents, production support, service requests, defects, upgrades, maintenance, and improvement initiatives • Guide teams in establishing healthy practices for: o backlog management o work intake o triage o prioritization o capacity allocation o dependency management o flow optimization o service-level transparency • Coach Scrum Masters, Product/Service leaders, people managers, and teams on when to apply Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid patterns based on work type • Support Scaled Agile events and practices as appropriate, including PI Planning, iteration planning, team retrospectives, ART synchronization, Inspect & Adapt, and cross-team coordination • Help define and improve metrics that are meaningful for platform/admin/ops teams, such as: o throughput o aging work o response time o resolution time o unplanned work ratio o flow efficiency o predictability and forecasting o WIP management • Partner with RTEs, product/service leaders, engineering leaders, and Agile Coaches to improve team and ART-level ways of working • Coach leaders away from treating all work as feature delivery when operational work requires different policies, classes of service, and governance • Help build sustainable operating models for shared services, enabling work, and platform support patterns consistent with Scaled Agile principles. Required Qualifications • SAFe Scrum Master certification or comparable certification required • 7 years of Scrum Master or Agile coaching experience • 3 years coaching platform administration, platform operations, infrastructure, cloud operations, SRE, service operations, or technical operations teams • Demonstrated success coaching teams whose work includes a mix of: o Operational Support o Interrupt-Driven Demand o Platform Maintenance o Reliability/Stability Work o Enhancement Work • Strong understanding of Kanban, flow-based practices, work intake management, and handling unplanned work • Experience working in complex enterprise environments with multiple teams and dependencies • Strong facilitation, coaching, and stakeholder management skills • Ability to challenge unhelpful agile habits and tailor practices to the actual work Preferred Qualifications • Experience coaching data platform administration teams, DataOps teams, or data operations teams • Experience in cloud data/analytics environments such as Snowflake, Databricks, Azure, AWS, GCP, BI platforms, API platforms, or enterprise data services • Experience supporting teams in regulated or highly governed environments • Familiarity with platform reliability, observability, service management, and operational excellence practices • Experience working with Jira and/or Jira Align • SAFe Advanced Scrum Master, SPC, or relevant agile coaching credentials preferred but not required What Success Looks Like Within the engagement, this person should help: • Establish more effective ways of working for platform admin and ops teams • Improve visibility into planned vs unplanned work • Reduce confusion caused by forcing feature-team agile patterns onto operational teams • Improve flow, prioritization, and predictability • Strengthen team and leadership understanding of how to operate platform and DataOps teams effectively in a safe environment Ideal Candidate Profile This person is not a ceremony manager. They are a senior agile practitioner who understands the realities of platform operations and knows how to coach teams toward practical, sustainable operating models. They know that admin/ops teams cannot be coached the same way as clean-sheet product development teams, and they can translate agile at scale principles into something that actually works in the real world. EEO: “Mindlance is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of – Minority/Gender/Disability/Religion/LGBTQI/Age/Veterans.”