Scrum Master

Job Description

Across our organization, we're building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR. This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.

NPR designs and delivers experiences that grow and engage NPR's audience across all of our platforms. Each month, 129 million people engage with NPR via digital platforms – via our websites, smart speakers, podcasts, mobile applications, and more. These represent the fastest-growing segments of public radio listeners. Our purpose is to identify and explore new directions for the renewal of public radio's value proposition to the next generation of our audience.

NPR is looking for an experienced, talented and knowledgeable Scrum Master join the Audience Engineering group responsible for innovation across NPR's audience facing digital platforms and touch points.

A day in the life -

You provide day-to-day guidance and coaching to cross-functional teams that connect NPR with its audiences. You are passionate about Agile methodology, comfortable in a servant-leader role, and balance your talent for building consensus with a canny ability to prioritize and drive toward outcomes.

You will facilitate planning, daily progress, retrospectives, and other Agile ceremonies, assist Product Managers / Owners and Technical Leadership to translate their vision and business objectives into backlogs, and empower team progress. You know how to get results and do whatever it takes to clear impediments and communicate risks, progress, success, and opportunities to your team and management.

While we invite a range of backgrounds, we have a few prerequisites:
• Agile fluency: You are a Certified Scrum Master and have worked on Agile teams in past roles. You are sensitive to the conditions that create success, can spot when teams diverge from flow, and know how to bring them back on course.
• Leadership qualities: You'll be expected to establish credibility and rapport up and across, as well as with technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Proactive approach: You don't wait around. If there's an issue, you're usually the first to flag it. If your team is stumped and you don't have the answer yourself, you know how to get it.
• A natural communicator: You will be eager to share your team's work and increase its visibility, over-communicate risks and dependencies, and both give and accept constructive feedback.
• Technical aptitude: You are at ease discussing technical concepts and have a strong digital background. You have a strong understanding of cross-team dependency coordination and impact.

The best candidates share these traits with our team:
• Honesty, a friendly attitude, a good sense of humor, and a voracious hunger to learn and improve.
• Creativity, curiosity, and flexibility -- tempered by pragmatism, patience, and acute attention to detail.
• Love of -- bordering on obsession with -- Agile culture.

What else?
• This is a hybrid permitted role. The employee will be required to be onsite at our Washington, DC office at least 10 days a year. The employee must also reside in an NPR supported location based on the number of onsite days they choose.
• We believe that investment in the right methods and tools, combined with attention to people and culture, is the best way to deliver great work as happily and efficiently as possible. We constantly try to improve how we do what we do.
• We are located in DC's NoMa district in LEED Gold Certified building. We are 5 minutes to the metro and within 15 minutes of a great range of restaurants, retail, and culture (Union Station, H Street Corridor, and Union Market).

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gkzm2k-13-59-36-203-42 in your application.