Scrum Master

Scrum Master II

Location : Buffalo, NY

Hire Type : Contingent

Pay Range : $43 - $71/hour

Work Type : Full-time

Work Model : Hybrid, 4 days onsite

Work Schedule : Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm

No C2C, C2H or sponsorship

Positional Overview

The Imagine Group is recruiting for a Scrum Master on behalf of our client, a leading financial institution in Buffalo, New York , serving individuals, businesses, and communities across the eastern United States. Known for its strong regional presence, commitment to community engagement, and focus on long-term customer relationships, the organization offers a stable and collaborative work environment with opportunities for growth.

In this role you will be responsible for providing servant-leadership and mentorship to multiple cross-functional agile teams through effective application of Agile principles and frameworks including Scrum, Kanban and Extreme Programming (XP). Strengthens understanding effective practices, theories and techniques to support continuous improvement. Educates and coaches teams to create an environment that fosters self-organization, cross-functionality, collaboration, conflict resolution, transparency and continuous improvement. Visualizes, communicates and radiates team information to keep their work and impediments visible to stakeholders.

Role & Responsibility:

• Utilize a broad knowledge base of agile practices including user stories, retrospectives, story mapping, Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), Test-Driven Development (TDD), continuous integration, pairing, information radiators, etc., to help create high performing teams.
• Encourage a continuous improvement culture for individuals within the agile teams, constantly discovering better ways of working, through transparency, collaboration, and retrospectives.
• Curate team-level coaching content used to guide teams regarding agile practices.
• Facilitate meetings with the teams for purposes of idea generation, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, retrospectives, problem-solving and alignment.
• Help the teams gain transparency into their workflow through appropriate use of information radiators.
• Address blocking issues that are beyond the team’s authority, or require support from other teams, so the teams remain focused on achieving their goals.
• Work with other Agile Leaders to increase the effectiveness of the application of Agile within the organization.
• Provide mentorship to less experienced Scrum Masters.
• Seek and host a variety of individual and team learning opportunities, such as communities of practice, conferences, meetups, reading and classroom training.
• Understand and adhere to the Company's risk and regulatory standards, policies and controls in accordance with the Company's Risk Appetite. Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management.
• Design, implement, maintain and enhance internal controls to mitigate risk on an ongoing basis. Identify risk-related issues needing escalation to management.
• Promote an environment that supports diversity and reflects the brand.
• Maintain internal control standards, including timely implementation of internal and external audit points together with any issues raised by external regulators as applicable.
• Complete other related duties as assigned.
• While not having direct management responsibility, the position manages activities through influence, accountability and ownership, functioning in an agile environment.

Skills & Experience

• Bachelors degree and a minimum of 4 years experience as a member of an agile team, including a minimum of 2 years Scrum Master experience, or in lieu of a degree, a combined minimum of 8 years higher education and/or work experience, including a minimum of 4 years experience as a member of an agile team, including a minimum of 2 years Scrum Master experience.

Education and Experience Preferred:

• Depth of knowledge in at least two technology team roles (project manager, user experience, business analyst, developer, testing, deployment).
• Prior experience fostering team self-organization and continuous improvement.
• Knowledge of Agile and Lean principles and practices.
• Experience developing/managing digital capabilities.
• Understanding of Design Thinking principles.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Prior experience leading through influence.