Scrum Master

**Must be currently living within 90 mins of Lansing, Michigan; no exceptions or relocation.**

**Must be willing and able to interview in-person, onsite (Lansing, Michigan)**

**Only accepting candidates and applications through Smith Johnson Website link**

Job Title: Project Manager 3 (Scrum Master)

Location: Lansing, MI – (Hybrid, 2 days a week on week)

Status: Contract – 1year, possible extension

Application Deadline: Friday, December 5, 2025

Job Number: 15849

This is a contract opportunity with a great organization. As a contractor for Smith Johnson, you are eligible for medical, dental, life, disability. Smith Johnson pays for 70% of your medical and dental and 100% of life and disability. The contract is also eligible for PTO/holiday accrued monthly. You are also eligible for a 3% retirement matching plan. Smith Johnson believes in taking care of our contractors.

SUMMARY

The scrum master position will work as a contract resource for the State of Michigan - Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) supporting the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). The resource will act as the scrum master for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Accounts Receivable and Collections (MDHHS ARC) Project with duties including coaching the team on scrum practices, facilitating scrum ceremonies, removing impediments to progress, protecting the team from external distractions, and fostering collaboration and continuous improvement within the team and organization

Key Competencies

• Strong servant leadership mindset with a focus on empowering teams.

• Exceptional analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills.

• Ability to drive transparency, predictability, and continuous delivery.

• Comfortable facilitating executive-level reporting, burn-up metrics, dashboards, and KPI updates.

• Ability to maintain a positive, motivating influence within high-pressure or sensitive delivery timelines.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• 7 years of experience serving as a Scrum Master in Agile software development environments.

• Proven experience supporting complex, enterprise-level financial or debt management software solutions.

• Advanced knowledge of Scrum, Kanban, and Scaled Agile methodologies (SAFe, Nexus, LeSS, or similar).

• Strong understanding of software development life cycles (SDLC), secure application development lifecycle (SADLC), and modern DevOps practices.

• Demonstrated ability to guide teams in implementing Agile best practices, continuous improvement, and delivery forecasting.

• Experience facilitating Agile ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Refinement, Sprint Reviews, and Retrospectives.

• Strong ability to remove impediments, negotiate dependencies, and collaborate across cross-functional teams (engineering, QA, product, architecture, compliance, and operations).

• Hands-on experience using Agile lifecycle management tools (Azure DevOps, Jira, Rally, VersionOne, etc.).

• Proven ability to coach Product Owners in backlog refinement, story decomposition, estimation, and value prioritization.

• Experience supporting teams working with integration-heavy, API-driven, or data-centric systems.

• Strong understanding of regulatory, privacy, and security considerations in financial services software (e.g., PCI, SOC, FFIEC, CFPB-related requirements).

• Excellent communication, facilitation, conflict resolution, and stakeholder management skills.

• Ability to lead multiple Agile teams or a large, scaled program context. (Working between Agile and Non-Agile teams)

• Experience working in fast-paced, cloud-first environments (Azure, AWS, or GCP).

Preferred

• SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), SAFe Advanced Scrum Master (SASM), CSM, PSM I/II, ICP-ACC, or equivalent certification.

• Experience working with debt collection/servicing systems, payment processing workflows, or financial case management platforms.

• Understanding of user-centered design, accessibility standards, and customer journey mapping.

• Experience supporting Quality Assurance processes including regression, user acceptance testing (UAT), and post-deployment validation.

• Ability to facilitate technical discussions, backlog elaboration sessions, and dependency alignment across multiple teams.

• Experience contributing to or establishing Centers of Excellence (Agile CoE) or process governance programs.