Senior Scrum Master

Job Summary

The Senior Scrum Master enables one or more Agile teams to deliver reliable, incremental value by facilitating Scrum and Kanban practices, coaching team members and Product Owners, and improving end-to-end flow. As UFCU continues its digital transformation journey, this role plays a key part in maturing our Agile practices — bringing experience, patience, and a servant-leader mindset to a team that is actively growing its capabilities.

This position removes impediments, strengthens empiricism and self-management, and collaborates with cross-functional partners to improve delivery predictability, quality, and member outcomes. Exceptional interpersonal skills, a strong coaching orientation, and the ability to build trust across business and technology teams are essential. Familiarity with financial services environments, including their regulatory landscape and stakeholder complexity, is a strong advantage.

The Senior Scrum Master reports to Enterprise Transformation Office Leadership.

About UFCU

Our Credit Union was founded in 1936 and has grown to serve members throughout Texas and beyond. At UFCU, we are more than just a financial institution, and our people are more than just employees. We are dedicated to our purpose of empowering our Members to achieve financial success and build brighter futures.
In pursuit of our aspiration that UFCU is loved by millions of Members and built to thrive for generations, we are guided by our values:

Purposefully Member-Obsessed

We are driven by a profound sense of empathy to deeply understand our Members’ needs and preferences, what brighter futures means to them, and the obstacles in their way. We act in our Members’ best interests, forever seeking to empower their financial success.

Possibilities Reimagined

We are inspired to courageously experiment, learn, and iterate in pursuit of positive impact for our Members, UFCU, and coworkers. We challenge assumptions, embrace diverse perspectives, and make use of data and insights.

Performance Excellence Rooted in Unwavering Integrity

We do the right thing, always. We champion teamwork, accountability, continuous improvement, and celebrate successful outcomes of others, fostering an inclusive environment of excellence and collaboration.

Essential Functions

Agile Process Facilitation

• Facilitate Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement — ensuring each event is purposeful, time-boxed, and produces clear decisions and follow-ups.
• Coach team members on the why behind Agile practices, not just the mechanics, fostering genuine understanding over compliance.
• Onboard and integrate new Scrum team members into team norms and practices quickly and effectively.
• Contribute to building consistent practices across the Scrum Master team by sharing facilitation techniques, retrospective formats, and coaching approaches.

Scrum Team Delivery

• Enable the Scrum team to meet sprint goals by fostering transparency, removing impediments, and coaching on Agile practices.
• Maintain visibility into sprint commitments and team performance, tracking progress against goals.
• Facilitate team-selected flow metrics — such as cycle time, lead time, WIP limits, and sprint goal success rate — to support forecasting and continuous improvement.
• Surface blockers, dependencies, and risks clearly; drive cross-functional resolution without creating team dependency on the Scrum Master.
• Partner with Product Owners to ensure backlog items are well-understood, prioritized, and have clear acceptance criteria.
• Lead sprint demos and retrospectives; capture and share agreed improvement actions to promote accountability and learning.

Continuous Improvement and Change Enablement

• Facilitate retrospectives and improvement workshops that help teams meaningfully inspect and adapt.
• Coach teams, Product Owners, and stakeholders on Agile principles to support UFCU's broader transformation goals.
• Help the organization move along the agile maturity curve by introducing practices, tools, and mindsets appropriate to where teams are today and where they need to go.
• Promote transparency through metrics and visual management techniques that support team-driven improvement.

Delivery Transparency and Alignment

• Partner with Product Owners and stakeholders to ensure backlog items align with roadmap and business objectives.
• Facilitate conversations around risks, trade-offs, and dependencies — informing prioritization decisions without owning them.
• Help teams visualize progress and forecast delivery using flow-based metrics accessible to both technical and business audiences.

Leadership and Organizational Coaching

• Model servant leadership: support the team's autonomy, shield them from unnecessary interruptions, and create conditions for high performance.
• Mentor team members and peers on Agile principles, collaborative behaviors, and effective communication.
• Contribute to a psychologically safe environment where experimentation, feedback, and honest retrospectives are the norm.

Other

• Adhere to all company policies, procedures, and business ethics codes.
• Complete required regulatory training as assigned
• Maintain strict adherence to and compliance with all laws, rules, regulations, and internal controls specific to the role, including but not limited to Bank Secrecy Act, Anti-Money Laundering, USA Patriot Act, OFAC and Fair Lending regulations

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities

Knowledge

• Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) and scaled practices (SAFe 6.0 or similar).
• Backlog management, refinement facilitation, and sprint planning techniques.
• Software development lifecycle and DevOps concepts sufficient to bridge business and technical conversations.
• Flow-based metrics (cycle time, lead time, WIP) and lightweight forecasting techniques.
• Tools: Azure DevOps, Microsoft Teams, Jira, or similar.
• Familiarity with financial services operations, regulatory environment, or compliance culture is a plus.

Skills

• Expert facilitation of Scrum events and collaborative workshops.
• Coaching individuals and teams on Agile principles and empirical thinking.
• Conflict resolution and constructive negotiation across business and technology groups.
• Clear, audience-appropriate communication: from daily standups to executive updates.
• Data-informed decision-making using team-owned metrics.

Abilities

• Influence without authority: coaching across teams and stakeholders in a growing Agile environment.
• Build trust and psychological safety that enables self-management and honest feedback.
• Navigate ambiguity and adapt coaching style to meet teams where they are.
• Inspire a continuous improvement mindset and contribute to a learning culture within the Scrum Master team.

Core Competencies

• Demonstrating Member Obsession
  • Puts themselves in the Member’s shoes
  • Looks for friction points
  • Makes it personalized and easy
• Demonstrating Performance Excellence
  • Sets standards for elevating excellence
  • Ensures elevated quality
  • Takes responsibility
  • Conducts continuous improvement
• Demonstrating Innovation
  • Challenges current thinking
  • Approaches change with a positive mindset

Experience

Minimum Qualifications

• Seven (7) of Scrum Master and/or project management experience, including managing multiple teams or workstreams simultaneously.
• Demonstrated experience working in an Agile environment, supporting two or more Agile teams.
• Must be bondable.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active Agile certification such as CSM, A-CSM, PSM, SAFe Scrum Master, or PMI-ACP. (A relevant degree or PMP may substitute; we value demonstrated capability over credentials alone.)
• Experience in financial services, banking, credit unions, or similarly regulated industries.
• Hands-on experience with flow-based metrics, forecasting, and visual management techniques.
• Familiarity with scaling frameworks (SAFe, LeSS, or Scrum@Scale) in organizations actively building Agile maturity.

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle or feel; reach with hands and arms; and talk or hear.
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision and ability to adjust focus.
• Employee will make extensive use of the telephone and virtual communications requiring the ability to effectively and accurately explain complex information.

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job.

• This position is available to work from home 50% of the time. This schedule may change at UFCU’s discretion and as business needs dictate.
• This position may involve periodic stressful conditions.
• May occasionally require an adjusted work schedule, overtime, and evening/weekend hours.
• Frequent computer use at a workstation up to two hours at a time.
• The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.