Scrum Master
Your tasks
We are seeking an experienced Scrum Master at VP level to join our Sales and Trading technology organisation and support high-performing Agile delivery teams within a complex financial services environment.
The Scrum Master will be responsible for enabling effective Agile delivery, removing impediments, improving team performance and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. The role will work closely with Engineering Managers, Product Owners, Business Stakeholders, Architects and technology leadership.
The scrum master will work closely with Engineering Managers, Product Owners, Business Stakeholders, Architects and technology leadership, as well as middle or back-office teams across multiple regions.
Agile Delivery
- Facilitate effective Agile delivery across one or more technology teams.
- Own and facilitate Scrum ceremonies, including Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Reviews / Demos, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement
- Ensure teams maintain a sustainable and predictable delivery cadence.
- Track sprint progress, dependencies, risks and impediments.
- Promote transparency of delivery status, commitments and dependencies.
- Support effective release planning and coordination.
Scrum Master Leadership & Coaching
- Coach development teams, Product Owners and stakeholders on Agile principles and Scrum practices.
- Help teams become increasingly self-organising and autonomous.
- Identify opportunities to improve team productivity, collaboration and engineering delivery.
- Challenge ineffective processes and behaviours constructively.
- Promote continuous improvement through data-driven retrospectives and improvement initiatives.
- Support teams transitioning from traditional delivery models to Agile ways of working.
Impediment & Dependency Management
- Proactively identify and remove delivery impediments.
- Escalate issues requiring management intervention.
- Coordinate dependencies between technology teams, business teams and external stakeholders.
- Manage cross-team dependencies where multiple systems or delivery streams are involved.
- Help resolve organisational blockers affecting delivery.
Stakeholder Management
- Build strong relationships with Product Owners, Engineering Managers, Business Analysts, Architects and senior stakeholders.
- Provide clear and transparent communication on delivery progress, risks and dependencies.
- Facilitate discussions where there are conflicting priorities or delivery constraints.
- Ensure stakeholders understand Agile delivery principles and team commitments.
Metrics & Continuous Improvement
- Establish meaningful Agile metrics to monitor delivery performance.
- Use metrics such as Velocity, Sprint predictability, Lead time, Cycle time, Throughput, Defect trends, and Blocked time
- Identify trends and use data to drive improvement.
- Help teams improve quality, predictability and delivery efficiency.
- Establish and track improvement actions from retrospectives.
Requirements
The successful candidate will be an experienced Agile practitioner who can operate effectively in a demanding, fast-paced environment and can coach teams beyond simply facilitating Scrum ceremonies.
- Work effectively with software engineering teams delivering enterprise-scale technology platforms.
- Understand modern software development practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps and cloud/platform technologies.
- Understand the implications of technical debt, legacy systems, architecture dependencies and production support on delivery.
- Work closely with engineering leadership to ensure Agile practices support high-quality technical delivery.
Required Experience
- Educated to degree level in Computer Science or similar engineering degree.
- At least 8 years of Significant experience as a Scrum Master in a technology organisation.
- Strong practical experience with Scrum and Agile methodologies.
- Experience working with software engineering teams.
- Proven experience coaching teams and individuals in Agile ways of working.
- Strong experience managing impediments, dependencies, risks and delivery issues.
- Experience working with senior technology and business stakeholders.
- Demonstrable experience improving team delivery performance and predictability.
- Experience working in complex, enterprise-scale environments.
- Strong understanding of software development lifecycle and modern engineering practices.
Desirable Experience
- Experience in financial services, investment banking or capital markets.
- Experience supporting multiple technology teams or Agile Release Trains.
- Experience with distributed or geographically dispersed teams.
- Experience with Jira, Confluence or similar Agile delivery tooling.
- Experience with DevOps, CI/CD and automated testing environments.
- Experience with BDD and collaborative development practices.
- Experience working within regulatory or highly controlled environments.
- Experience with Agile at Scale frameworks such as SAFe, LeSS or Nexus.
Desirable certifications include
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
- Professional Scrum Master (PSM)
- SAFe Scrum Master
- PMI-ACP
- Other recognised Agile/Scrum qualifications
Certification is desirable but practical Agile delivery experience is more important than certification.
There will at times be the need to balance multiple projects so utilising their time efficiently will be key.
Competencies
- Customer Focus
- Driving Change
- Driving Results
- Embraces Diversity
- Enterprise Leadership
- Judgement and Decision Making
- Risk Management
- Strategic and Visionary
- Trust and Integrity
Other
This is a hybrid role based in Dublin requiring 3 days a week onsite.