MetLife

Role Value Proposition: 

MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs.  We're building an inclusive and purpose-driven culture that empowers everyone to make a difference at work and in the world.  MetLife is recognized as one of top 100 America’s Most Responsible companies and ranked 2nd in financial services industry, being the only insurer in the top 100.  MetLife is also a market leader in the Pension Risk Transfer Industry which is managed by the Retirement and Income Solutions (RIS) organization.  For 100 years, MetLife has worked with companies to provide for the financial security of their retirees and beneficiaries. 

MetLife is seeking a Scrum Lead II to join our shared services organization application development team in Cary, NC.  You will help enable 2-3 Agile teams to deliver maximum business value by aligning teams focused on modernizing and delivering technology products.  Responsibilities will include Training, Mentoring and Coaching team members, proactively eliminating barriers, protecting teams from external interferences, and facilitating team meetings to ensure delivery towards sprint goals. You will also work closely with team members, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Release Train Engineers and stakeholders to support Sprint and Release Planning, foster team self-awareness, encourage cross-training, decision-making and continuous improvement to enable high-performing teams.  Additional responsibilities would be leading daily collaboration activities with the team and facilitating all key Agile ceremonies while applying and enhancing SAFe Agile frameworks to help teams adopt and establish an agile mindset.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead up to 2-3 onshore and/or offshore scrum teams in moderate complexity workstreams
• Facilitate daily standups, iteration reviews and iteration planning ceremonies to ensure full team engagement.
• Collaborate with the Product Owner to support short and long-term release planning, while maintaining a healthy team backlog ready for execution.
• Shield the teams from external interference to enable optimal functionality and productivity.
• Anticipate and address or escalate potential or actual impediments to team delivery (cultural barriers, logistic challenges).
• Collaborate with the Release Train Engineer and other scrum masters to remove impediments across collaborating teams.
• Track and report on Agile team metrics (Burndown/up, velocity), escalating issues as needed.
• Coach teams through the exploration and adoption of agile engineering practice (e.g., test automation, CI/CD, BDD, TDD, Agile Architecture).
• Contribute best practices in Scrum Master Community of Practice.
• Aware of and adhere to audit/compliance requirements for execution

Essential Business Experience and Technical Skills:

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Business, or a related discipline
• 5+ years related experience as an Agile project team member with strong knowledge of Agile principles, concepts, and methodology.
• 5+ years of experience in IT/Software Engineering industry focusing on product development and engineering Agile development and/or project management environment
• Advanced presentation, influencing, facilitation and relationship management skills.
• Comfortable discussing business functions, operations, strategies, and objectives.
• Experience leading trainings and workshops.
• Thought leader in applying new concepts and coaching approaches to the Scrum Master community.
• Ability to influence reporting shift from waterfall to Agile metrics.
• Thorough knowledge of business functions and extensive understanding of business operations, strategies and objectives. Able to assist in analyzing and advising Product Owner of market trends.
• One or more Scrum Certifications: Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Product Owner (CSPO), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional ScrumMaster (PSM), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Certification (SSM, SASM)

Preferred:

• Extensive experience working in a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment