Agile Coach
Holmdel, NJ

Job Description

Objective:

This is a full-time salaried position. Location can be anywhere in USA with preference to East Coast Candidates. Must be willing to travel to Guardian Locations in NJ, NY, PA, CT or WI.

The candidate for the position of Agile Coach will be responsible for coaching and mentoring agile execution, Scrum Masters, Agile Product Owners and executives to leverage agile principles, practices and frameworks to deliver high value business capabilities.

The Agile Coach may also coach agile program teams as needed. Serves as a subject matter expert on Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, XP etc) and on scaling agile development, including the use of scaling frameworks such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe,Less). Embraces servant leadership and displays behaviors that come with the key mindset shifts associated with being agile.

This person will also be responsible for collaborating to develop changes to the agile application development practices used by various technology areas in order to improve delivery of business objectives.

What You'll Do:

* Expert professional coach, facilitator, mentor, trainer, and consultant.
* Assess, plan, and drive the Agile approach, principles and practices during a transformation.
* Provides hands-on management and coaching of scrum teams in all aspects of scrum (facilitating daily stand-up meetings, sprint planning, sprint demo and retrospective meetings, backlog grooming, daily routines, self-organization, collaboration, iterative development, managing flow, calculating velocity, limiting work in progress, etc.)
* Assesses the maturity of the team and organization and coaches the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that is sustainable and appropriate for the team and organization
* Training, coaching and mentoring PMO organizations on agile frameworks
* Coaching on agile engineering best practices such as test-driven development (TDD), DevOps, continuous integration (CI), and test automation.
* Facilitates discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution.
* Guide and drive executives, managers, teams to implement Agile development approaches.
* Identify other areas of expertise that need to be brought in to accomplish the client's objective.
* Work to help all levels of the organization understand the benefits of working agile.
* Reviews current agile processes drives process improvements and challenges team to innovate
* Work well with other coaches and consultants.
* Remains informed about industry trends and best practices concerning agile methodologies and advances those best practices in the organization.

Skills and Experience:

* 5 years of experience coaching agile frameworks and various frameworks (i.e. Scrum, Kanban, XP, etc.)
* 7-10 years of application development experience in varying technologies.
* Professional Business-related experience.
* Experience working with enterprise PMOs to blend waterfall and agile portfolio reporting for senior management.
* Certified in one or more of the following: CSM, PMI-ACP, CSD, CSPO, SPC, CSC, ICP-ACC, etc.
* Familiar with Agile framework support tools like VersionOne, Rally, JIRA, TFS, Lean-Kit, etc.
* Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to work effectively with team members, support personnel, and clients.
* Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
* Ability to collaborate with other coaches and trainers to build Guardian's agile delivery capabilities.
* Bachelor's Degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, or a directly related field.
* Knowledge and use of industry accepted Software Development methodology.
* Basic knowledge and/or experience with agile engineering practices and techniques such as User Stories, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment, Automated Testing, Agile Games.

Guardian Overview

Every day, Guardian gives 26 million Americans the security they deserve through our insurance and wealth management products and services. Since our founding in 1860, our long-term view has helped our customers prepare for whatever life brings whether starting a family, planning for the future or taking care of employees. Today, we're a Fortune 250 mutual company and a leading provider of life, disability and other benefits for individuals, at the workplace and through government sponsored programs. The Guardian community of ~9000 employees and our network of over 2750 financial representatives is committed to serving with expertise when, where and how our clients need us. Our commitments rest on a strong financial foundation, which at year-end 2017 included $8.0 billion in capital and $1.6 billion in operating income. For more information, please visit guardianlife.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

Guardian is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to age, race, color, creed, religion, sex, affectional or sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, military or veteran status, or any other classification protected by applicable law.

Guardian® is a registered trademark of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.

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