Scrum Master - NIPR

The National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR), an affiliate of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), is seeking a dedicated individual for the role of a Scrum Master. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who enjoys working in a stable organization that supports the public good and makes a difference every day. NIPR is a not-for-profit technology company that provides cost-effective, streamlined, and uniform licensing data and compliance services for insurance professionals. Together with the NAIC and the insurance industry, NIPR protects and serves insurance consumers. We are a licensing and compliance resource for insurance professionals, providing expertise, agile technical solutions, innovative tools, and data to support the changing needs of state regulators and the insurance industry.

NIPR is based in Kansas City, Missouri.  This is a full-time position which will allow a person to work remotely within the United States or hybrid in NIPR’s physical office space in Kansas City, MO.

Position Overview:

The Scrum Master in the NIPR IT organization oversees multiple agile teams who design, develop, test, and deploy software solutions with an emphasis on quality, performance, and usability.  They are knowledgeable in agile/lean methodologies and able to educate others. They act as a buffer between the team and outside influences and maintain a safe working environment for the team by helping with conflict resolution. They increase team efficiency, motivate the team, encourage changes that will ensure quality and timeliness.

Key Responsibilities:

• Facilitate one to many teams working on products, strategic projects, internal projects, application maintenance work, shared internal services, and other software development initiatives.
• Working with product owners and team members to ensure the organization and facilitation of scrum ceremonies, including daily stand ups, sprint planning, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, sprint demos, and retrospectives.
• Assists and works to facilitate and train agile mindset, values, principles, events and team practices.
• Understands when and how to apply different working frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean Agility, and DevOps.
• Facilitates team conversations and working sessions, to help bring divergent opinions to consensus.
• Removes impediments or guides the team to remove its own impediments.
• Builds a trusting environment where issues are raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis on correcting and problem solving.
• Coordinates and encourages participation from all team members in agile ceremonies and longer-term planning exercises.
• Guides the team on applying self-organizing, self-corrective behaviors, analyzing and adapting to the feedback inputs, all for the purpose of building high performing teams.
• Monitors and communicates team progress during sprints; assists with taking corrective action when needed.
• Supports and educates the Product owner as well as project/development teams in applying the scrum framework and agile principles, and in the importance of providing vision, analysis, requirements elicitation, priorities, refining and maintaining the product backlog.
• Takes a leadership role in ensuring all issues are resolved or organizational impediments escalated in a timely and satisfactory manner, working effectively with resources on and outside the scrum team.
• Tracks and leverages key metrics and tools to champion team health, workstream delivery, and continuous improvement.
• Maintains team information radiator for interested stakeholders.
• Assists developing agile practices and procedures.
• Assist with customer relations activities.
• Utilizes company-provided and other resources to self-train and improve skillset. Sets goals for personal development and seeks relevant training and certifications.

Skills and Experience

Customer Service Related:

• Build relationships within the team and understand the most appropriate use of these relationships to support agile practices in a manner that best suits the needs of the organization.
• Demonstrates an understanding of office, remote office, and team relationships.
• Demonstrates excellent interpersonal skills

Administrative/Organizational Task Related:

• Excellent planning and organizational skills.
• Must be able to multi-task and work in a ‘matrix-managed’ organization.
• Demonstrates excellent ability to understand the ‘big picture’.
• Must possess the ability to recognize priorities of tasks within projects.

Other skills:

• Ability to maintain a calm demeanor under stressful conditions.
• Ability to work collaboratively and to negotiate successful solutions.
• Ability to work independently.
• Demonstrates high levels of honesty, integrity, veracity, and confidentiality, as well as professional and personal ethics.
• Must be proactive and demonstrate initiative.
• Proficiency using visualization and tracking tools such as Jira

Minimum Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree (BA) from four-year college or university and 1-2 years’ experience within an agile development environment
• 3 - 5 years’ experience in servant leadership, technical leadership, or Scrum Master. Must have knowledge of agile development best practices. Must have knowledge and understanding of modern Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or an equivalent combination of years’ experience, education, and expertise.
• Experience in Microsoft Office Products (Outlook, Word, Excel).
• PSM, CSM, or equivalent is strongly preferred or may be required to obtain if hired.

Compensation:

• Starting at $110,000 up to $125,000, commensurate with experience and education.
• This position is not eligible for commission compensation.

Sponsorship:

Applicants must be authorized to work for any employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.

Why Work at NIPR?

• Remote work schedule
• 37.5-hour work week
• Tuition reimbursement
• Referral bonuses
• Choice of insurance plans
• Vacation buy-back
• Adoption assistance
• Parental leave
• Employee recognition programs
• Days off for community service
• Student loan repayment program

Interested in learning more about the amazing benefits NIPR offers? Please visit NIPR Jobs for more information.