Consultant, Scrum Master

If you’re passionate about being part of a dynamic organization that enables a Fortune 100 company with nearly $70 billion in annual sales to drive innovation and adopt new technologies that deliver business results, then Nationwide’s Technology team could be the place for you! At Nationwide®, “on your side” goes beyond just words. Our customers are at the center of everything we do and we’re looking for associates who are passionate about delivering extraordinary care.

• Nationwide Technology is seeking a Scrum Master to join the OIPA Optimizers team within NF Technology supporting Life BSA. The OIPA Optimizers team is a platform team responsible for maintaining and advancing the OIPA platform, a critical capability supporting Life business operations.
• In this role, you will enable predictable delivery, strengthen team effectiveness, and help the team successfully execute a major OIPA platform upgrade. You will work closely with product, engineering, architecture, business, and delivery partners to coordinate priorities, manage dependencies, surface risks early, and keep work moving from intake through implementation.

Key responsibilities

• •Serve as the Scrum Master and servant leader for the OIPA Optimizers team, enabling a collaborative, inclusive, and accountable team culture.
• •Facilitate effective Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily synchronization, refinement, reviews, retrospectives, and release-related planning.
• •Help the team plan and deliver platform stability, operational support, technical debt, regulatory or business commitments, and new capabilities with transparency and predictability.
• •Partner with the Product Owner and technology leaders to clarify priorities, sequence work, balance capacity, to deliver business outcomes.
• •Coordinate cross-team dependencies across application, platform, infrastructure, architecture, testing, security, data, and business partners.
• •Identify impediments, delivery risks, and decisions that require attention; drive resolution or escalate appropriately.
• •Support planning and execution for all deliverables including OIPA upgrade, including readiness, sequencing, integration points, testing coordination, cutover preparation, and post-release follow-through.
• •Maintain accurate and visible work information in Jira and other required delivery tools, consistent with NF standard work and Modern Operating Model
• •Use delivery insights, team observations, and stakeholder feedback to improve flow, quality, predictability, and team health.
• •Lead team through AI accelerated delivery.

Required Skills and Experience

• •Experience serving as an Agile Leader, Scrum Master, or similar role in a large-scale technology delivery environment
• •Demonstrated ability to lead Agile teams through platform maintenance, modernization, upgrades, or other significant technology change.
• •Strong experience with Agile and Scrum standard work, team coaching, and continuous improvement
• •Strong product-centric mindset and ability to connect delivery practices to business outcomes
• •Ability to influence without direct authority and create alignment across business and technology partners.
• •Experience with Jira and disciplined use of Agile delivery metrics and work-management practices.
• •Experience managing delivery risks, impediments, dependencies, competing priorities, and stakeholder expectations.
• •Ability to learn complex platforms, business processes, and system integrations quickly.
• •Support work planning, allocation, tracking, and reporting through Planview
• •Experience working in insurance, financial services, or other highly regulated environments is preferred.

This role follows the SuccessFlex hybrid work environment, with preferred location in Columbus, OH.

Job Description Summary

If you’re enthusiastic about delivering secure technology solutions to support a company providing extraordinary care to its customers, then Nationwide Technology is the place for you. Nationwide's industry-leading technology workforce embraces an agile work environment and a collaborative culture to deliver outstanding solutions and results. If that sounds like something you aspire to, we want to hear from you!

As a Scrum Master, you’ll be responsible for the effectiveness of one or more Agile teams enabling teams to become self managing, cross functional, and focused on delivering valuable outcomes with high-quality, valuable outcomes. You’ll collaborate with teams and stakeholders to enable effective planning and continuous improvement, by applying Agile practices (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, Lean) as appropriate to the team context. You’ll coach teams in effective refinement, flow, and delivery practices while participating in communities of practice to continuously improve Agile ways of working.

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

Influence and coach multiple team members, Product Owners, and stakeholders on Agile principles, Scrum values, and empiricism.

Drive the identification and removal of impediments to multiple teams’ progress; escalating obstacles requiring outside resolution and helping address risks and issues that may impact delivery.

Apply secure software and systems engineering practices throughout the delivery lifecycle to ensure our data and technology solutions are protected from threats and vulnerabilities.

Partner with Product Owners and stakeholders to support prioritization decisions that maximize value toward business outcomes.

Coach and drive Agile teams to enable value-based decision-making, and effective collaboration across disciplines while promoting strong engineering, testing, automation, and delivery practices.

Guide multiple Agile teams practicing DevOps, DataOps, and AI/MLOps in the application and refinement of Agile and Scrum principles appropriate to their context, including more complex and strategic efforts.

Drive transparency by using team performance metrics responsibly to support inspection, adaptation, overall performance and continuous improvement.

Collaborate with leaders to address systemic and organizational impediments affecting team effectiveness, and contribute input on broader delivery, capacity, and operational considerations.

Responsible for organizing and driving the creation of Scrum events to ensure they are purposeful, effective, outcome-focused, and enable transparency, inspection, and adaptation, fostering a culture of learning, and continuous improvement.

May perform other responsibilities as assigned.

Reporting Relationships: Reports to Technology Manager/Director.

Typical Skills and Experiences:

Education : Undergraduate studies in computer science, management information systems, mathematics or related field are preferred. Agile certification (Certified ScrumMaster – CSM, SAFe ScrumMaster Certification - SSM, Professional ScrumMaster Certification - PSM) and proven experience across multiple teams is a plus.

Experience : Six or more years of Agile experience, including three years as a Scrum Master or similar role. Strong technical expertise in one or more Agile practices and frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. Plus, a technical background in Software Engineering. Three or more years of experience working with ALM tools.

Knowledge, Abilities and Skills: Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor team members and peers. Ability to manage multiple teams and lead cross-team initiatives. Strong candidates demonstrate a team-first mindset, excellent communication skills, strong problem-solving and conflict resolution skills, and active engagement in the Agile community. Insurance and/or financial services industry knowledge a plus.

Other criteria, including leadership skills, competencies, and experiences may take precedence.

Staffing exceptions to the above must be approved by the hiring manager’s leader and Human Resource Business Partner.

Values : Regularly and consistently demonstrates the Nationwide Values.

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