Sr Scrum Master

Matlen Silver; New Jersey; Hybrid; USD 96,000 - 103,000; Full time

Job summary

Matlen Silver is seeking a Scrum Master to facilitate Scrum ceremonies and coach teams across a Scaled Agile environment. The role centers on improving delivery flow, risk management, and alignment with product management stakeholders in a Jersey City/New York City setting.

Requirements include strong experience with PI Planning, backlog management, and Jira/Jira Align usage to support roadmap delivery and program board inputs. Onsite 3 days/wk with hybrid options available.

Qualifications

• Facilitate Scrum ceremonies with clear agendas and timeboxing.
• Drive PI Planning readiness including backlog quality and dependencies.
• Communicate plans, risks, and dependencies to stakeholders with concise updates.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate and continuously improve Scrum ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review/Demo, Retrospectives.
• Lead PI Planning preparation for the team with objectives, risks, and capacity assumptions.
• Create transparency using Jira/Jira Align signals and executive-ready updates.

Skills

Scrum Master

Agile coaching

Jira/Jira Align

PI Planning

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Jira

Jira Align

Roadmaps

Job description

Location: Onsite 3 days a wk; Hybrid – Office location is Jersey City NJ/NYC

Required Pay Scale: $70-75hr W2

***Due to client requirements this role is only open to USC or GC candidates***

This job is responsible for facilitating scrum ceremonies, managing dependencies, providing visibility into delivery plans and progress, promoting agile principles and mindset through coaching, and enabling continuous improvement across multiple scrum teams. Key responsibilities include optimizing the flow of stories and the value delivered for medium to high complexity projects and programs. Job expectations include ensuring the team resolves impediments quickly, following agreed-to processes, and maintaining a good relationship with the product management team and other stakeholders.

Required Skills

• As a Contractor Scrum Master supporting Technology Infrastructure Priorities, you will enable one Agile team within a Scaled Agile (ART) environment to deliver technology outcomes across Database, Middleware, and Messaging platforms. You will be accountable for facilitating the Scrum operating rhythm, strengthening delivery predictability, managing dependencies and impediments, and ensuring alignment with Enterprise Change Management and other policy requirements.
• This role is PI Planning-critical: you will drive PI readiness (backlog quality, dependency clarity, objective readiness) and ensure post-PI execution stays aligned to PI objectives, risks, and commitments.
• Daily responsibilities and/or priorities include:
• Facilitate and continuously improve Scrum ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review/Demo, and Retrospectives (clear agendas, timeboxing, measurable outcomes).
• Lead PI Planning preparation for the team: ensure objectives, dependencies, risks, and capacity assumptions are ready; support program board inputs and follow-through on commitments.
• Create stakeholder transparency: communicate plans, risks, and dependencies using Jira/Jira Align signals and concise, executive-ready written/visual updates.
• Proactively manage delivery risk: dependency mapping, impediment removal, escalation as needed, and ensuring compliance with Enterprise Change Management and related governance.
• Partner with Product Owner/Product Manager to maintain a healthy backlog: clear priorities, right-sized epics, ready stories, acceptance criteria quality, and effective story splitting/estimation.
• Leverage Copilot Chat (AI) and existing prompt libraries to help formulate deliverables and decompose them into epics and user stories (e.g., Jeff Patton-style story mapping), while applying human validation for accuracy, compliance, and clarity.
• Use Jira Software Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) roadmap views to validate and communicate the team’s plan, including capacity, dependencies, sequencing, and target dates.
• Own the operating rhythm for Plans hygiene: triage, explain, and resolve Jira Software Plans (Advanced Roadmaps) warnings (e.g., missing estimates, invalid hierarchy/links, date conflicts, scope exclusions, over-capacity signals) so roadmap views remain trustworthy for PI readiness and stakeholder decisions.
• Use metrics to drive improvement: coach using flow/predictability/quality signals (e.g., WIP, cycle time, throughput, aging work, spillover, defects) and convert insights into actions that stick.
• Coach for team health and performance: psychological safety, conflict navigation, cross-training, and continuous improvement grounded in Agile values and principles.
• Middleware platform lifecycle upgrades, resiliency enhancements, operational efficiency improvements
• Stronger production readiness and operational handoffs (release-ready, supportable outcomes)
• Improved backlog quality and team maturity measured through metrics and retrospectives
• Maintains high-quality delivery artifacts and data hygiene in Jira/Jira Align to enable trustworthy reporting and traceability.

Experience Matters. Let your experience be driven by our experience. For more than 40years, Matlen Silver has delivered solutions for complex talent and technology needs to Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders. Led by hard work, honesty, and a trusted team of experts, we can say that Matlen Silver technology has created a solutions experience and legacy of success that is the difference in the way the world works.

Matlen Silver is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers all applicants for all positions without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, the presence of a non-job-related medical condition or disability, or any other legally protected status.

If you are a person with a disability needing assistance with the application orat any point in the hiring process, please contact us at email and/or phone at [e-mail] // 908-393-8600