Scrum Master

The scrum master serves as a point person responsible for understanding

the big development picture of each sprint. They ensure the team is working

on the right tasks at the right time. They also want to ensure the team is fully

deployed and not idle. The role of scrum master often involves working

closely with the product owner, Business Analyst, Software Developers to

translate epics, stories, and other items on the sprint list into actionable tasks

for developers and create a transparent outcome-driven delivery

environment.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and other Agile ceremonies with clear objectives and outcomes.
• Facilitating the daily stand-up (sometimes called the daily scrum) and helping the team reach consensus on each of the three questions.
• Identify, track, escalate, and drive resolution of blockers, dependencies, risks, and delivery impediments affecting the team.
• Promote realistic sprint commitments based on team capacity, historical performance, technical dependencies, and operational obligations.
• Encourage Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, acceptance criteria, testability, documentation, and engineering quality practices.
• Maintain transparent Agile artefacts, action logs, dependency logs, impediment registers, and delivery dashboards as required.
• Support release planning and coordination across Engineering, QA, DevOps, Product, Security, Operations, and other dependent teams.
• Facilitate root-cause discussions and improvement actions when delivery targets, quality expectations, or sprint goals are missed.
• Support multiple squads or one complex delivery squad depending on organizational structure and delivery needs.

Serves the product owner by:

• Making sure everyone on the team understands the project’s goals and scope.
• Helping the product owner maintain the product backlog.
• Facilitating scrum events (daily stand-ups, other meetings) as needed.

Serves the development team by:

• Coaching the development team on self-organization.
• Helping to remove obstacles to the developers’ progress.
• Facilitating scrum events (daily stand-ups, other meetings) as needed.

Serves the entire organization by:

• Encouraging the organization to adopt the scrum methodology in their own workflow.
• Coaching the organization on the transition to a scrum working framework.
• Keeping the organization, particularly the project’s stakeholders, up to date on the progress of the scrum team’s projects.

Requirements

Behavioural Competencies

• Demonstrates strong conceptual and analytical thinking skills.
• Demonstrates effective stakeholder and relationship management.
• Demonstrates proficiency in digitisation and process improvement.
• Communicates ideas clearly through effective business presentations.
• Demonstrates strong problem-solving and decision-making skills.
• Builds positive and productive interpersonal relationships.
• Manages conflicts constructively and professionally.
• Demonstrates effective time and self-management.
• Demonstrates effective project management skills.
• Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
• 3-5 years of relevant professional experience, including hands-on experience serving as a Scrum Master or Agile delivery facilitator for software/product teams.
• Practical experience working with cross-functional teams comprising software engineers, QA engineers, Business Analysts, Product Owners, UX/UI, DevOps, and other stakeholders.
• Experience using Agile delivery tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps/Boards, Confluence, or equivalent platforms.
• Strong working knowledge of requirement documentation, Scrum, Kanban, agile planning, backlog refinement, estimation techniques, release planning, and continuous improvement.
• Exposure to wealth management platforms, core banking systems, or capital markets technology.
• Demonstrated ability to manage dependencies, facilitate difficult conversations, resolve delivery friction, and influence without formal authority. • Strong written and verbal communication, facilitation, presentation, negotiation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Scrum certification or equivalent agile certification Desirable
• Additional exposure to Lean, DevOps, ITIL, product management, or project management is an advantage.
• Familiarity with Nigeria's financial services regulatory environment and digital transformation trends
• Exposure to wealth management platforms, core banking systems, or capital markets technology.