Position: Scrum Master
Location: Chicago, IL
Duration: Full-Time / Long Term Contract With potential extension.
About the role
We're looking for an experienced Scrum Master to lead an Agile software delivery team on a long-term, remote engagement. You'll be the heartbeat of the team, facilitating its ceremonies, clearing its path, and keeping everyone aligned from individual contributors up to senior stakeholders. The best person for this role leads by serving the team and measures success by the team's success.
What you'll do
- Facilitate all Agile ceremonies (daily stand-ups, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives), keeping them focused, inclusive, and productive.
- Coach the team on Agile and Scrum principles and cultivate a habit of continuous improvement.
- Identify and remove impediments that slow the team down, escalating quickly when needed.
- Partner with the Product Owner to keep the backlog healthy, refined, and prioritized.
- Track and communicate sprint progress, velocity, and delivery metrics using Agile tooling (e.g., Azure DevOps, Jira).
- Keep both leadership and the team continuously informed on status, risks, dependencies, and decisions.
- Represent the team to stakeholders and act as its primary point of contact.
The ideal Scrum Master
The qualities that matter most for this role:
- Servant leader: You lead by serving. You put the team's needs first, empower others to do their best work, and define your success by what the team achieves rather than by authority.
- Collaborative: You build trust easily and work with people, not above them (developers, analysts, product owners, and leadership alike), to reach shared outcomes.
- A natural communicator and information spreader: You keep everyone in the loop. You translate fluently between leadership and the delivery team, and you surface status, risks, and decisions clearly and proactively in both directions.
- A change agent: You champion continuous improvement. You constructively challenge the status quo, coach the team toward better practices, and help the group adapt and grow.
- An impediment remover: You relentlessly clear blockers. You anticipate obstacles, tackle them head-on, escalate when necessary, and protect the team's focus and momentum.
- A facilitator and the face of the team: You run crisp, purposeful ceremonies and represent the team to everyone it works with. You are the connective tissue between the team and the wider organization.
What you bring
- Bachelor's degree in Business, IT, or a related field.
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or equivalent (required).
- 5+ years as a Scrum Master supporting Agile software teams in a technical environment.
- Hands-on proficiency with Agile delivery tooling (Azure DevOps preferred) for backlog, sprint, and velocity tracking.
- Excellent facilitation, communication, and stakeholder-management skills.
Nice to have
- Experience in healthcare, Medicaid, or public-sector/government programs.
- Familiarity with cloud delivery environments.