Scrum Master

Job description

**Stand Together** is a philanthropic community that helps America’s boldest changemakers tackle the root causes of our country’s biggest problems, from education to the economy, broken communities, and toxic division, among dozens of other pressing [issues](https://standtogether.org/issues). We provide our partners with access to resources including funding, thought leadership, a network of peers, and a playbook for applying proven principles to transform lives and society. Stand Together is building an internal Agile practice to sustain meaningful delivery improvements made over the last year. As a Scrum Master embedded across multiple teams, you will be the person those teams rely on to run great ceremonies, maintain a healthy backlog, and create the trust and psychological safety that makes honest retrospectives and real improvement possible. You will support multiple teams at different stages of Agile maturity, so you must be comfortable adapting your approach while striving to execute to a consistent standard. You will report to the Agile Practice Lead, who establishes the standards and frameworks you operate within. You will work closely with Product and Engineering Leads on each of your teams. ### How You Will Contribute - Facilitate Agile ceremonies: standups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, retrospectives, and reviews with preparation, clear time-boxing, and a consistent bias toward outcomes over process. - Build the trust and psychological safety that makes retrospectives honest and improvement actions credible. - Shift sprint planning from in-meeting discovery to in-meeting alignment by doing the administrative and readiness work, including ticket review, agenda setting, and Jira cleanup. - Maintain backlog health: ensure work is properly categorized, sized, structured, and ready for commitment before it enters a sprint. - Apply and reinforce standardized ticket structures: consistent issue types, field usage, user story and acceptance criteria formats, spike success criteria, bug reproduction steps. - Track, analyze, and communicate sprint metrics including velocity, rollover trends, and estimated versus actual effort; surface patterns that improve planning accuracy over time. - Facilitate root-cause analysis of blockers and rollover; ensure carryover discussions result in specific, corrective actions. - Identify and actively pursue impediments that cross team boundaries, escalating to the Agile Practice Lead when resolution requires broader organizational action. - Contribute to overall delivery standards by sharing what is working, flagging what is not, and helping build the playbooks and templates that benefit all teams. ### What You Will Bring - Prior experience as a Scrum Master or Agile delivery lead supporting cross-functional product or technology teams. - The interpersonal skills to build trust quickly on teams that may be skeptical, fatigued, or in conflict. You know that facilitation is only as effective as the relationships beneath it. - Strong Jira skills: backlog management, workflow configuration, automation, dashboard and reporting development, and the discipline to keep data clean and meaningful. - Comfort operating across multiple teams simultaneously, including managing schedule complexity and adapting your approach to teams at different maturity levels. - A diagnostic mindset: you notice patterns, ask good questions, and distinguish between a team problem, a process problem, and an organizational problem before deciding how to respond. - Enthusiasm to contribute to Stand Together's [vision and principled approach](https://standtogether.org/our-vision-and-principles) to solving problems, and a commitment to stewarding [our culture](https://standtogether.org/careers/our-culture), which champions values including transformation and innovation, entrepreneurialism, humility, and respect. ### Standout Candidates Will Bring - Experience standing up or scaling Agile practices in maturing organizations. - Experience supporting technology, data, or platform teams where delivery involves significant cross-team dependencies and technical complexity. - Demonstrated ability to create durable templates, guides, and operating standards. - Experience working within a structured Agile practice under a practice lead or within a center of excellence, where craft standards are set at a level above the individual team. ### What We Offer - [**Competitive benefits:**](https://standtogether.org/careers/benefits) Enjoy a 6% 401(k) match with immediate vesting, flexible time off, comprehensive health and dental plans, plus wellness and mental health support through Peloton and Talkspace. - **A meaningful career:** Join a passionate community of over 1,300 employees dedicated to improving lives and driving innovative solutions to complex social challenges. - **Commitment to growth:** Thrive in a non-hierarchical environment that empowers employees to discover, develop and apply their unique talents. - **Competitive compensation:** Our approach rewards the value you create through competitive salaries and bonus opportunities, allowing you to share in the success you help drive.