Scrum Master

Overview

Role: Scrum Master

Location: UK Flexible

Role ID: 2023-1851

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Energy & Environment, one of Ricardo plc’s five operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy & strategy to implementation.

We are currently looking for an Scrum Master to join our Digital Services team.

Key responsibilities

As a Scrum Master/ Agile Coach you will help coach our teams on the agile methodology and oversee the development of collaborative agile teams (coming together from the across the business working closely with Digital Services) to ensure effective outcomes. The Scrum Master will be responsible for guiding teams through the implementation process and tasked with encouraging workers and our leadership team to embrace agile methodologies. We need a scrum master to help our business continue its agile journey, whilst delivering successful digital projects, continuously improving our ‘one team’ culture with our scientific and technical domain experts across the business. You'll have the opportunity to influence agile decisions, and coordinate with the wider business and our customers about our digital delivery practices.

In this role, the Scrum Master is accountable for the overall running, maintenance and continuous improvement of the agile processes to increase collaboration, continuously improve techniques that promote adaptability and flexibility in the face of unpredictable circumstances.

• Quickly gain an understanding of the business: what we do, where we add value and what our digital performance metrics are
• Demonstrate gravitas and the ability to protect the development team from disturbances
• Identify and raise risks and issues to senior management as they arise with mitigation plans
• Identify blockers impeding agile adoption within teams and provide recommendations on how to overcome them.
• Be the go-to-person to contact in order to help to initiate resolution of dependencies.
• Adapt tone, approach, communication methods and tools to suit the audience effectively
• Adapt and apply agile methodology (typically scrum or Kanban) to how we organise and manage our digital projects, including managing backlog(s) and task assignments as appropriate
• Foster an agile first approach within the team and through wider business interactions
• Develop excellent working relationships with our digital delivery teams, which includes professionals in a range of digital and non-digital disciplines
• Lead the implementation of all appropriate agile team ceremonies – planning, stand-ups, sprints, sprint goals, sprint reviews and retrospectives
• Gather, analyse and share relevant performance metrics about our digital delivery
• Communicate well within the business and develop a wide personal network
• Foster an enthusiasm for the agile approach and continuous improvement
• Work closely with our clients and helping to educate them on the agile approach
• Ensure a consistent project management approach per project
• Support the bid writing process
• Continually improve project financial and operational performance
• Provide coaching and training
• Prepare and deliver effective communications both verbally and written regarding progress and status for teams.
• Deliver workshops to facilitate and aid our teams to continuously improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• Identify process issues and recommend improvements.
• Document & track lessons learnt in retrospectives and use the outcomes for future analysis.

The ultimate goal is to arm our project teams with the right knowledge, tools and training around agile methodologies allowing the digital services delivery teams to work efficiently and effectively in collaboration with the practices.

Our Scrum Master will use their coaching and mentoring capabilities to guide and help people determine the right solutions to challenges and ensure a consistent, repeatable and maintainable velocity within assigned development teams, and where needed, drive change.

Key competencies and experience

• Proven Scrum Master background with success stories in evangelising agile
• The ability to quickly establish collaborative partnerships with key stakeholders and team members to help them in their journey of adopting Agile methodologies.
• Experience of task management software (preferably Jira and Azure DevOps)
• Excellent communication, coaching and team development skills
• Strong ability to facilitate productive refinement sessions for soliciting requirements and reaching acceptance criteria understood and agreed between development team and product owners
• A strong understanding of agile methodologies and digital transformation
• A creative, positive and facilitative style
• Strong commercial awareness and customer orientation
• Excellent organisational skills
• A good level of technical understanding across a range of software languages and technologies
• The ability to write compelling bid/ proposal content
• The ability to determine the reasons why teams and projects may not be delivering as expected and take effective actions to remedy the situation

Desirable

• Previous team leadership experience is preferred but not essential - you will likely have a small team of direct reports
• A relevant agile qualification is preferred (e.g. CSM or similar)
• Experience in using agile for delivering multiple digital projects concurrently
• Experience in consulting and/or the environmental sector
• Create a safe environment for healthy conflict and meaningful collaboration.
• Encourage the proliferation of Agile best practices between different teams.

Skills and behaviours

• A responsible attitude - take responsibility for the tasks assigned and deliver them to an agreed level of quality and speed.
• Ability to prioritise work - In the face of potentially conflicting priorities coming from different team requirements.
• Problem solving skills - Needed to find innovative solutions to team requirements.
• Time Management - Managing own time
• Active Listening - Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Speaking - Talking to others to convey information effectively.
• A ‘Can-Do’ attitude - Taking ownership of challenges and provide effective solutions.
• Attention to Detail - Ability to achieve thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.