Sr Scrum Master

Location:
Onsite 3 days a wk;
Hybrid – Office location is Jersey City NJ/NYC

Required Pay Scale: $70-75hr W2

*** Due to client requirements this role is only open to USC or GC candidates***

This job is responsible for facilitating scrum ceremonies, managing dependencies, providing visibility into delivery plans and progress, promoting agile principles and mindset through coaching, and enabling continuous improvement across multiple scrum teams. Key responsibilities include optimizing the flow of stories and the value delivered for medium to high complexity projects and programs. Job expectations include ensuring the team resolves impediments quickly, following agreed-to processes, and maintaining a good relationship with the product management team and other stakeholders.

Required Skills

• As a Contractor Scrum Master supporting Technology Infrastructure Priorities, you will enable one Agile team within a Scaled Agile (ART) environment to deliver technology outcomes across Database, Middleware, and Messaging platforms. You will be accountable for facilitating the Scrum operating rhythm, strengthening delivery predictability, managing dependencies and impediments, and ensuring alignment with Enterprise Change Management and other policy requirements.
• This role is PI Planning-critical: you will drive PI readiness (backlog quality, dependency clarity, objective readiness) and ensure post-PI execution stays aligned to PI objectives, risks, and commitments.
• Daily responsibilities and/or priorities include:
• Facilitate and continuously improve Scrum ceremonies:
  Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review/Demo, and Retrospectives (clear agendas, time boxing, measurable outcomes).
• Lead PI Planning preparation for the team: ensure objectives, dependencies, risks, and capacity assumptions are ready; support program board inputs and follow-through on commitments.
• Create stakeholder transparency: communicate plans, risks, and dependencies using Jira/Jira Align signals and concise, executive-ready written/visual updates.
• Proactively manage delivery risk: dependency mapping, impediment removal, escalation as needed, and ensuring compliance with Enterprise Change Management and related governance.
• Partner with Product Owner/Product Manager to maintain a healthy backlog: clear priorities, right-sized epics, ready stories, acceptance criteria quality, and effective story splitting/estimation.
• Leverage Copilot Chat (AI) and existing prompt libraries to help formulate deliverables and decompose them into epics and user stories (e.g., Jeff Patton-style story mapping), while applying human validation for accuracy, compliance, and clarity.
• Use Jira Software Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) roadmap views to validate and communicate the team’s plan, including capacity, dependencies, sequencing, and target dates.
• Own the operating rhythm for Plans hygiene: triage, explain, and resolve Jira Software Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) warnings (e.g., missing estimates, invalid hierarchy/links, date conflicts, scope exclusions, over-capacity signals) so roadmap views remain trustworthy for PI readiness and stakeholder decisions.
• Use metrics to drive improvement: coach using flow/predictability/quality signals (e.g., WIP, cycle time, throughput, aging work, spillover, defects) and convert insights into actions that stick.
• Coach for team health and performance: psychological safety, conflict navigation, cross-training, and continuous improvement grounded in Agile values and principles.
• Middleware platform lifecycle upgrades, resiliency enhancements, operational efficiency improvements
• Stronger production readiness and operational handoffs (release-ready, supportable outcomes)
• Improved backlog quality and team maturity measured…