Agile Coach

Job Title: Senior Agile Coach

Client Type: Oil & Gas

Location: Remote

Travel: 1-2 weeks per quarter to San Antonio, TX or Findlay, OH

Contract Duration: 12 months – extensions highly likely

Rate: up to $100/hr.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Agile Coach with extensive experience in Scaled Agile Environments (SAFe) and a robust technical background in areas such as Infrastructure, DevSecOps, DevOps, CI/CD, or Containerization. Ideal candidates will have previously held roles in architecture, security, or development, such as Software Architect, Security Engineer, or similar positions.

The Senior Agile Coach plays a pivotal role in driving the Lean Agile Center of Excellence (LACE) agile transformation across the organization. This role involves coaching and mentoring multiple development teams, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, and ensuring the effective implementation of agile practices. The Senior Agile Coach collaborates with leadership to align agile initiatives with business goals and provides strategic guidance to enhance organizational agility.

Key Responsibilities

• Supports multiple teams or teams-of-teams in building backlogs, story pointing, internal processes, dependency management, and other factors toward predictable delivery.
• Coaches team supervisors and leaders on team skillsets and development toward cross-functional delivery.
• Champions the use of metrics and other objective measures across teams and leadership.
• Identifies and promotes best practices in release planning, team goal-setting, and documentation/decomposition of Features and quarterly objectives, etc.; educate and coach others in planning and goal-setting.
• Partners with compliance, risk, safety, legal, security, cybersecurity, HR, DevSecOps, etc. to define and follow processes that improve Agile delivery through governance, quality, and risk management.
• Coaches Agile methodologies, including iteration planning, refinement sessions, retrospectives, and daily standups for multiple teams or programs.
• Builds and facilitates collaborative training regularly to teams or groups on various Lean-Agile topics, from overviews to advanced topics.
• Coaches best practices in backlog management across the organization.
• Contributes to the development of department- or company-wide DevSecOps processes, practices, and methodologies that increase quality and decrease risk.
• Coaches teams, teams-of-teams, portfolios, and leadership on Lean-Agile methodologies that improve value delivery. Sets the strategic direction for Agile application and adoption in the organization (aligned to overall LACE/transformation strategy)
• Partners with other coaches to function as a coaching team, identifying opportunities for cross-silo improvements and synergies in areas like skills training and learning across organizations. Shares and trains best practices with other coaches and leadership.
• Aligns coaching strategy/plan to LACE goals, objectives, and direction
• Partners with LACE in agile transformation efforts when needed that may not be directly related to coaching. This may be items such as agile guidance creation, helping define execution practices and guardrails, helping establish agile maturity measures, etc.

Skills and Competencies

• Extensive knowledge of agile practices, frameworks, and techniques.
• Technical knowledge in Infrastructure, DevSecOps, DevOps, CI/CD, or Containerization.
• Exceptional people and project management skills.
• Strong coaching skills and ability to motivate and develop teams.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Proficiency with agile planning and development tools (e.g., Azure DevOps, JIRA, Confluence, Rally).
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical information in a condensed manner to various stakeholders verbally and in writing.
• Strategic thinking and ability to align agile initiatives with business objectives.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience as an Agile Coach.
• Previously held roles in software development, architecture, cyber security, or similar positions.
• Certifications: Agile, scrum, or project management preferred (e.g., CSM, CSP, PMP, SAFe).
• Proven track record of leading agile transformations and coaching at an organizational level.