[Hiring] Agile Team Lead @Kainos

Role Description

As a Team Lead at Kainos, you will be responsible for leading an agile team to deliver high quality solutions that meet client and user needs. You will:

• Create a positive and creative culture and a productive working environment.
• Empower and support your team to perform well, learn, and grow in a manner consistent with Kainos company values.
• Foresee and remove blockers and effectively manage risks and issues at a team level.
• Work closely with other Agile Team Leads and stakeholders to ensure your team is working on the right things at the right time under the support and guidance of a Delivery Manager.
• Take on broader management responsibilities beyond the agile team as required and actively contribute to the Management capability.

Qualifications

• Active SC clearance is mandatory.
• Minimum 3 years of experience in a similar role with UK defence sector organizations is mandatory.
• Proven experience as a senior scrum master OR a combined role of a project manager, who is also a hands-on scrum master for UK defence sector organizations.
• Minimum 3 years of demonstrable success delivering bespoke software projects from scratch, using agile methodologies (Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, etc.) for external customers.
• Strong experience in customer-facing projects with UK defence sector organizations - syncs and reporting, presentations, board meetings, workshops, upscaling opportunities.
• Strong managerial skills, both direct and indirect.
• Strong commercial awareness - working with financial teams, understanding and basic reporting of costs, preferably working under a budget plan of £5M or more.
• Excellent interpersonal skills.
• Highly flexible (including a willingness to work away from home base).

Requirements

• Establish ways of working to enable an agile team to plan, forecast and deliver against a product backlog.
• Act as a role model for collaborative behaviours, agile values and professionalism.
• Lead retrospectives and continuous improvement initiatives; applying previous knowledge, experience, and industry best practices in agile delivery.
• Put people first & develop others – manage, coach and develop a small number of staff, with a focus on managing employee performance.
• Actively manage the performance of team members, including the stewardship of improvement plans where necessary.
• Provide data, forecasts and progress updates to inform planning initiatives.
• Facilitate workshops and discussions to understand and effectively capture requirements to achieve a joint understanding of needs.
• Establish and maintain constructive and collaborative relationships with the client, other suppliers and third-party stakeholders.
• Ensure stakeholders can access current and accurate data on the status of the team’s delivery and that technical quality standards are followed.
• Support the Delivery Manager in ensuring projects deliver the agreed outcomes within budget.
• Be highly flexible (including willingness to work away from home base).

Benefits

• Persuasive and effective communicator with strong negotiating skills.
• Possess a solid understanding and strong practical experience of agile delivery in software development projects.
• Evidence of leading continuous improvement initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability in managing, coaching and developing members of your team and wider community.
• Experience of facilitating workshops and discussions.
• Ability to forge effective working relationships with stakeholders.
• Considerable experience in a relevant technical environment.
• Maintain effective and efficient delivery from your team during periods of remote working.

Desirable

• Good understanding of technology, digital services and trends.
• Experience of working with user research, design and data analytics expertise.
• Ability to demonstrate commercial awareness, particularly in client-supplier and multi-supplier environments, and an appreciation of project-level financials.
• Understanding of a range of planning and reporting methods common to project delivery.
• Scrum Master or similar Agile delivery certification.