Operational Excellence Coach

AXA UK plc; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading insurance company in Manchester is seeking an Agile Coach to drive agile adoption and cultural change. This role involves coaching teams, facilitating agile ceremonies, and developing training sessions to enhance performance. The ideal candidate has a deep understanding of agile frameworks and excellent facilitation and stakeholder engagement skills. This position offers a competitive salary, bonuses, and benefits such as a contributory pension scheme and private medical cover. Flexibility in working arrangements is encouraged.

Benefits

Competitive annual salary

Annual company & performance-based bonus

Contributory pension scheme

Life Assurance

Private medical cover

28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays

Wellbeing services & resources

AXA employee discounts

Qualifications

• Proven experience coaching teams and leaders in Agile delivery within complex environments.
• Deep understanding of frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, XP and Lean.
• Comfortable working with engineering teams and conversant in CI/CD, testing, and architecture.

Responsibilities

• Coach product tribes and leadership to adopt agile mindsets and practices.
• Facilitate agile ceremonies and workshops to enhance performance.
• Develop and deliver tailored training sessions based on agile maturity.

Skills

Agile delivery coaching

Excellent facilitation skills

Stakeholder engagement

Change management

Technical concepts awareness

Education

Agile certifications (e.g., ICP-ACC, ICP-ENT, CSP)

Job description

We're seeking an experienced Agile Coach to play a pivotal role in driving agile adoption and cultural change across AXA UK. This is a unique opportunity to shape how we deliver value, empower teams and embed agile practices at scale. You'll work closely with leadership, product teams and stakeholders to foster an agile mindset and support our ambitious transformation goals. This role offers a chance to lead significant organisational change, contribute to a major agile transformation and support the development of a new product operating model. If you thrive in dynamic environments and are passionate about enabling organisational agility, we want to hear from you. At AXA we work smart, empowering our people to balance their time between home and the office in a way that works best for them, their team and our customers. You'll work at least two days a week (40%) away from home, moving to three days a week (60%) in the future. Away from home means either attendance at one of our office locations, visiting clients or attending industry events. We’re also happy to consider flexible working arrangements, which you can discuss with Talent Acquisition.

Responsibilities

• Coach product tribes, leadership and stakeholders to adopt and embed agile mindsets, values and practices.
• Facilitate agile ceremonies, workshops and maturity assessments to enhance tribe performance.
• Act as a change agent, enabling agility at scale through targeted interventions and coaching plans.
• Partner with Tribe Leads, Product Owners and Scrum Masters to support backlog management, prioritisation and cross-team collaboration.
• Identify systemic impediments and work with leadership to resolve delivery blockers.
• Develop and deliver tailored training sessions based on agile maturity and business needs.
• Track agile adoption progress and provide feedback to governance and transformation forums.
• Contribute to the Agile Community of Practice by sharing insights, metrics and tooling improvements.

Location(s): UK, Europe & Africa : UK : Manchester

Qualifications

• Proven experience coaching teams and leaders in Agile delivery within complex, regulated environments.
• Deep understanding of frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, XP and Lean, with practical tailoring experience.
• Excellent facilitation, mentoring and stakeholder engagement skills.
• An understanding of change management capabilities, with the ability to navigate resistance and ambiguity.
• Comfortable working with engineering teams and conversant in technical concepts like CI/CD, testing, and architecture.
• Experience engaging with senior leadership, including exco-level conversations.
• Agile certifications (e.g., ICP-ACC, ICP-ENT, CSP) are preferred.
• Ability to work across large groups (150+ people) and adapt to various business areas and organisational contexts.

As a precondition of employment for this role, you must be eligible and authorised to work in the United Kingdom.

What we offer

• Competitive annual salary dependent on experience
• Annual company & performance-based bonus
• Contributory pension scheme (up to 12% employer contributions)
• Life Assurance (up to 10 x annual salary)
• Private medical cover
• 28 days annual leave plus Bank Holidays
• Opportunity to buy up to 5 extra days leave or sell up to 5 days leave
• Wellbeing services & resources
• AXA employee discounts