Lead Agilist I

Scrum Master/Lead Agilist

Location: Cincinnati Ohio Duration: 12 Months

Role Summary: Lead Agilist is a servant-leadership and Agile coaching role responsible for enabling high-performing Agile Squads within a commercial technology environment. The role focuses on strengthening Agile and Scrum maturity, fostering self-organization, removing organizational impediments, improving team dynamics, and helping squads continuously deliver measurable business value. The Lead Agilist serves as a coach, facilitator, mentor, and change leader who creates an environment of trust, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement. Rather than directing the squad, the Lead Agilist enables teams to identify and solve their own challenges while ensuring Agile principles and Scrum practices are effectively applied.

Key Responsibilities

• Coach Agile Squads, Product Owners, and Development Teams in Agile principles, Scrum practices, and effective ways of working.
• Facilitate Scrum ceremoniesincluding Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinementwith an emphasis on outcomes and business value.
• Build high-performing, self-organizing, cross-functional teams through coaching, mentoring, facilitation, and continuous feedback.
• Help teams establish effective inspect-and-adapt feedback loops using empirical data, metrics, observations, and other information radiators.
• Identify and remove impediments affecting squad productivity, collaboration, delivery, and organizational effectiveness.
• Address cultural, organizational, logistical, technical, and cross-team barriers while escalating issues when appropriate.
• Protect squads from unnecessary external interference and help teams maintain focus on priorities and customer value.
• Coach Product Owners and teams on Product Backlog management, prioritization, outcomes, acceptance criteria, and shared understanding of delivery goals.
• Foster psychological safety and create an environment where team members can openly raise concerns, challenge assumptions, and collaboratively solve problems.
• Facilitate neutral, constructive conversations that help teams resolve conflicts and make effective decisions.
• Use powerful questions, active listening, and coaching techniques to encourage critical thinking, creativity, accountability, and ownership.
• Promote continuous improvement across team interactions, processes, practices, and delivery capabilities.
• Encourage adoption of complementary Agile and engineering practices, including Kanban, Scrumban, XP, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, automated testing, Test-Driven Development, and collaborative development practices.
• Help squads improve understanding and management of dependencies, risks, workflow, quality, and delivery constraints.
• Partner with other Agile leaders and organizational stakeholders to improve communication, cooperation, and enterprise-wide Agile effectiveness.
• Educate and mentor individuals and leaders on Agile transformation, team dynamics, servant leadership, and the organizational impact of decisions.
• Model collaborative, courageous, transparent, and learning-oriented behaviors.
• Promote innovative thinking, experimentation, and sustainable team development.
• Ensure Agile practices operate within organizational policies, risk appetite, and customer-focused expectations.

Core Capabilities

• Agile & Scrum Leadership

• Strong understanding of Scrum principles, roles, events, artifacts, and empirical process control.

• Ability to assess Agile maturity and tailor coaching interventions to specific team needs.

• Experience applying multiple Agile frameworks and approaches beyond traditional Scrum.

• Coaching & Facilitation

• Strong coaching, mentoring, active listening, and facilitation capabilities.

• Ability to communicate complex concepts clearly and influence individuals at multiple organizational levels.

• Skilled in asking powerful questions and creating conditions for teams to find their own solutions.

• Effective mediator capable of navigating interpersonal and organizational conflict.

• Team Development

• Ability to build trust, psychological safety, accountability, and sustainable team performance.

• Experience developing self-organizing and cross-functional teams.

• Focus on maximizing individual potential while prioritizing overall team success.

• Ability to recognize team dynamics and intervene appropriately based on observed needs.

• Continuous Improvement & Data

• Ability to use empirical evidence, metrics, feedback loops, and observations to identify improvement opportunities.

• Strong critical and creative problem-solving skills.

• Ability to connect Agile practices to measurable improvements in delivery, quality, collaboration, and business outcomes.

• Technology & Delivery Understanding

• Working knowledge of the software development lifecycle, including requirements, analysis and design, development, testing, deployment, configuration, and change management.

• Familiarity with DevOps and engineering practices such as CI/CD, automated testing, TDD, and ATDD.

• Understanding of how technology practices and delivery pipelines influence Agile team effectiveness.

• Leadership & Organizational Influence

• Servant-leader mindset with the ability to lead through influence rather than authority.

• Ability to remove organizational barriers and coordinate effectively across teams and functions.

• Strong communication and relationship-building skills.

• Ability to provide objective guidance while remaining independent of organizational politics.

• Commitment to continuous learning and personal development.

Experience & Qualifications

• 5+ years of full-time professional business experience.

• 3+ years of Scrum experience.

• Demonstrated experience coaching, mentoring, teaching, presenting, and facilitating within team and organizational environments.

• Experience identifying, communicating, and removing impediments beyond the immediate team.

• Demonstrated conflict-resolution and mediation skills.

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Demonstrated commitment to Agile leadership, continuous improvement, collaboration, and customer-focused delivery.