Lead Agilist

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Lead Agilist to enable Agile Squads to consistently deliver business value while improving team effectiveness and Agile maturity. This role extends beyond facilitating Scrum ceremonies and requires a servant leader who can coach Product Owners, Development Teams, and organizational leadership while driving continuous improvement across multiple Agile teams.

The ideal candidate will possess strong coaching, facilitation, conflict resolution, and stakeholder management skills, with experience supporting enterprise Agile environments.

Location: Cincinnati, OH (Downtown)
Employment Type: W2
Duration: 12 Months (Likely Extension)
Experience Required: 5–10 Years
Work Authorization: Open to all authorized candidates (No sponsorship required)

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as a servant leader for one or more Agile teams.
• Facilitate Agile ceremonies, including Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement.
• Coach Product Owners, Development Teams, and leadership on Agile principles and best practices.
• Remove organizational and cross-functional impediments impacting delivery.
• Foster high-performing, self-organizing Agile teams.
• Track and improve Agile delivery using metrics such as Velocity, Burndown, Cycle Time, Lead Time, and Throughput.
• Promote continuous improvement and Agile maturity across teams.
• Facilitate conflict resolution and encourage collaboration among stakeholders.
• Support organizational change initiatives and Agile transformation efforts.
• Collaborate with engineering and DevOps teams to improve software delivery processes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Kanban, Scrumban, or XP.
• DevOps and CI/CD exposure.
• Test-Driven Development (TDD) experience.
• Agile transformation experience.
• Banking or Financial Services experience.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate will demonstrate:

• Enterprise Scrum Master experience.
• Experience supporting multiple Agile teams.
• Strong coaching and mentoring abilities.
• Experience removing organizational impediments.
• Agile transformation experience.
• Metrics-driven coaching approach.
• Strong emotional intelligence.

Required Skills

Agile Leadership

• Scrum Master experience
• Agile coaching
• Scrum framework expertise
• Product Owner coaching
• Development Team coaching
• Servant leadership
• Team facilitation
• Team dynamics and continuous improvement

Agile Delivery

• Sprint Planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Reviews
• Sprint Retrospectives
• Backlog Refinement
• Agile metrics and reporting
• Velocity, Burndown, Cycle Time, Throughput, and Lead Time

Team Development

• Coaching and mentoring
• Facilitation
• Conflict resolution
• Consensus building
• Psychological safety
• Building high-performing Agile teams

Agile Practices

• Scrum
• Kanban
• Scrumban
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Lean principles
• Continuous improvement

DevOps Awareness

• CI/CD concepts
• Automated testing
• Test-Driven Development (TDD)

Soft Skills

• Executive communication
• Stakeholder management
• Organizational coaching
• Change management
• Emotional intelligence
• Active listening
• Strong facilitation skills

Required Qualifications

• 5 years of overall business experience.
• 3 years of Scrum Master or Lead Agilist experience.
• Proven Agile coaching experience.
• Experience facilitating Scrum ceremonies.
• Demonstrated ability to remove delivery impediments.
• Experience coaching Product Owners and Development Teams.
• Strong conflict resolution and servant leadership skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Experience using Agile metrics to drive continuous improvement.