Our client is looking for an Agile Coach to join their team for a contract opportunity! The Agile Coach will guide engineering and cross-functional teams through Agile adoption, with a focus on improving operational effectiveness, team collaboration, and delivery outcomes. This role will work closely with leadership and development teams to facilitate Agile processes, promote cultural change, and create a sustainable environment of continuous improvement. The ideal candidate will support the leadership team in achieving strategic goals, maintaining workload balance, and aligning development efforts with business objectives.
Key Responsibilities:
- Agile Transformation & Coaching
- Lead the adoption and scaling of Agile practices across the engineering and business teams
- Facilitate the development of Agile teams, fostering a culture of transparency, self-organization, and accountability.
- Mentor and coach individuals at all levels, including executive leadership, to promote an Agile mindset.
- Process Improvement & Prioritization
- Help prioritize the product roadmap, applying concepts such as Cost of Delay, Kano Model OR WSJF to focus on delivering the highest-value work first.
- Develop clear, actionable roadmaps for delivering high-quality features while reducing technical debt.
- Align engineering processes across teams, reducing inefficiencies and improving clarity on development objectives.
- Facilitation & Communication
- Act as a facilitator for key team discussions.
- Improve communication between technical teams and business stakeholders, ensuring everyone understands the big picture and how their work fits into the broader company strategy.
- Address internal inefficiencies, especially those related to security theater, and help unblock projects.
- Leadership Development & Mentorship
- Assist technical leaders (such as Jamie and Simon) in reducing their operational load so they can focus on high-value leadership tasks.
- Provide executive-level coaching to help leaders collaboratively tackle business challenges and facilitate innovation.
- Support the continuous personal development of engineering leaders and team members.
- Delivery Management & Team Sustainability
- Guide teams in managing work in progress (WIP), ensuring sustainable workloads to maintain staff well-being and satisfaction.
- Drive delivery commitments, ensuring projects remain on track, providing transparent reporting to all stakeholders
- Collaborate with technical directors to maintain team trust and engineering effectiveness after external consultancies finish.
- Innovation & Strategic Planning
- Work with engineering leadership to implement innovative strategies that drive continuous improvement and foster a culture of experimentation.
- Facilitate discussions on deeper engineering changes, enabling teams to debate and reach alignment on complex technical decisions.
Top skills you need to have:
- Proven experience as an Agile Coach or similar role, with expertise in coaching teams and leaders.
- Strong background in Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Lean) and scaling Agile in larger organizations.
- Experience facilitating cross-functional teams, particularly within technical and business environments.
- Knowledge of roadmap prioritization techniques (e.g., Cost of Delay) and Agile project management tools.
- Exceptional facilitation skills to lead discussions, conflict resolution, and decision-making processes.
- Strong communication skills to bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, balancing strategic leadership with team coaching.
- Experience working in a technical environment with software and product development teams.
- Familiarity with managing external consultancy handoffs and maintaining continuity in delivery processes.
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field (Computer Science, Engineering, Business).
- Certified Agile Coach (ICP-ACC, CEC, SPC) or equivalent is a plus.
- Continuous learning and involvement in the Agile community (conference speaker, Agile certifications, etc.) is highly desirable.