Agile Process SME; Scrum Master - Contingent

About Aretum

Aretum is a mission-driven organization committed to delivering innovative, technology-enabled solutions to our customers across defense, civilian, and homeland security sectors. Our teams work at the intersection of strategy, technology, and transformation, helping agencies solve their most critical challenges. We believe in investing in our people and creating a culture where collaboration, inclusion, and professional growth are at the forefront.

We are seeking an Agile Process

SME (Scrum Master) to join our team supporting a large‑scale federal technology modernization program. As a team‑level Scrum Master, you will be fully embedded within a single Agile development team inside a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Agile Release Train, performing the traditional activities associated with Agile SAFe methodologies. You will coordinate, oversee, and manage all standard Scrum ceremonies for your team, document ceremony outputs, keep team metrics and status current without disrupting delivery, identify and remove impediments, and partner with the team’s federal Product Owner on backlog refinement and roadmap maintenance.

You will coach your team on SAFe practices, collaborate with the senior program‑level Scrum Master and the other team‑level Scrum Masters across the Agile Release Train, and work closely with the Solution Architect, UX, Accessibility, and QA leads to align sprint goals. This role is scoped to standard Scrum Master services only;
Business Analyst services are not included.

Due to the nature of our work as a federal consulting organization, employees may be expected to handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and must adhere to applicable safeguarding and compliance requirements.

Public Trust Eligibility Required.

• Perform traditional Agile SAFe activities at the team level within a single Agile development team.
• Coordinate, oversee, and manage the standard Scrum ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Standup, Sprint Review, Retrospective, Backlog Refinement) and document outputs clearly and consistently.
• Identify, surface, and drive resolution of team‑level impediments, escalating when necessary to the senior Scrum Master, Release Train Engineer, or program leadership.
• Support the team’s participation in Program Increment (PI) Planning, including preparing the backlog, facilitating sessions, and documenting objectives, dependencies, and commitments.
• Partner with the federal Product Owner and engineering team to maintain the 24‑month roadmap for the team’s Epic area, surfacing technical items and effort estimates alongside priorities.
• Facilitate Sprint Planning to ensure stories are well understood, properly sized, and aligned to sprint goals; facilitate Retrospectives that produce concrete, tracked improvement actions.
• Embed an Agile culture on the team using techniques from a wide range of Agile and Lean methods, remaining methodology‑aware rather than prescriptive.
• Coach team members, the federal Product Owner, and adjacent stakeholders on roles, behaviors, structure, culture, Agile ceremonies, and practices.
• Equip engineers and leads on the team with the skills and techniques to coach one another, supporting a self‑organizing, continuously improving team.
• Maintain team‑level Agile metrics (velocity, commitment reliability, flow, defect rates) and keep project and team status accurate and current.
• Contribute to weekly status reporting, including accomplishments, planned work, ticket numbers, and risks/issues with proposed solutions.
• Coordinate with the senior program‑level Scrum Master and other team‑level Scrum Masters across the Agile Release Train to resolve cross‑team dependencies, align practices, and maintain consistency of ceremony quality, tooling, and reporting.
• Collaborate closely with Tech Lead, UX, Accessibility, and QA leads to ensure priorities are aligned with sprint goals.
• Maintain Jira and Confluence hygiene, board configuration, sprint setup, workflow states, Definition of Ready, and Definition of Done to keep work transparent and reportable.
• Support onboarding of new team members and ensure consistent application of SAFe practices and…