Senior Scrum Master
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Work Arrangement: 100% Onsite – 5 days per week
Assignment Type: Contract
Start Date: September 21, 2026
End Date: March 31, 2027
Security Clearance: No clearance required
Maximum Extension: One extension
Incorp rate: $95-$103.33
Position Overview
Our client is seeking an experienced Senior Scrum Master to provide Agile leadership and delivery support for technology initiatives.
The successful candidate will serve as a servant leader and Agile subject matter expert, facilitating Scrum ceremonies, coaching cross-functional teams, removing impediments, supporting backlog management, and promoting continuous improvement.
This role also requires strong business analysis and process management capabilities, including requirements gathering, business process modeling, gap analysis, user story development, and stakeholder engagement. Experience working within DevOps environments and CI/CD delivery pipelines is highly important.
The successful candidate will work closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, developers, DevOps professionals, technical teams, and business stakeholders to ensure that delivery objectives are clearly defined, prioritized, and achieved.
Key Responsibilities
- Lead and facilitate Agile/Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog refinement sessions.
- Coach and mentor Agile teams on Scrum principles, Agile practices, self-organization, continuous improvement, and effective collaboration.
- Act as a servant leader by identifying and removing impediments that may affect team productivity or delivery.
- Support Product Owners with backlog management, prioritization, refinement, and ensuring work is sufficiently defined and ready for development.
- Facilitate collaboration between Product Owners, development teams, technical teams, business stakeholders, and other project participants.
- Identify and resolve conflicts within Agile teams and across stakeholder groups.
- Monitor Agile delivery metrics such as velocity, burndown/burnup, cycle time, and sprint performance to identify trends and opportunities for improvement.
- Facilitate sprint reviews and retrospectives, capture feedback, and translate lessons learned into actionable improvements.
- Support effective stakeholder engagement, communication, consensus building, and expectation management.
- Gather, analyze, validate, and document business and system requirements.
- Translate business requirements into clear and actionable user stories, acceptance criteria, process documentation, and other delivery artifacts.
- Model current-state and future-state business processes using BPMN, process flow diagrams, or similar techniques.
- Conduct gap analysis and identify opportunities to improve business processes, delivery practices, and team performance.
- Support the alignment of business requirements with technical delivery and development priorities.
- Work effectively within DevOps environments and support collaboration between development and operations teams.
- Demonstrate familiarity with CI/CD processes and the tools and practices used to support modern software delivery.
- Provide Agile and project delivery methodology expertise, guidance, and coaching to project teams and stakeholders.
- Develop or contribute to training materials, Agile guidance, standards, procedures, and delivery documentation as required.
- Promote effective Agile practices while ensuring alignment with organizational standards, policies, and delivery objectives.
Mandatory Qualifications and Experience
Education and Certifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related discipline.
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or equivalent Agile/Scrum certification.
- Strong knowledge of Scrum methodology, Agile principles, and business analysis frameworks.
Scrum and Agile Leadership
- Demonstrated experience working as a Scrum Master in an Agile software development environment.
- Proven ability to lead and facilitate Scrum ceremonies and apply Scrum principles effectively across cross-functional development teams.
- Demonstrated experience coaching Agile teams toward self-organization, continuous improvement, and effective delivery.
- Proven ability to identify and remove impediments and resolve issues affecting team productivity.
- Experience supporting Product Owners with backlog management, prioritization, refinement, and sprint readiness.
- Strong experience with Agile metrics and performance tracking, including velocity, burndown/burnup, and related measures.
Business Analysis and Process Management
- Strong experience gathering, analyzing, validating, and documenting business requirements.
- Demonstrated ability to translate requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, process documentation, and actionable delivery items.
- Experience developing current-state and future-state business process models using BPMN, process flow diagrams, or comparable modeling techniques.
- Experience performing gap analysis and identifying opportunities for process and operational improvement.
- Ability to bridge business requirements and technical delivery considerations.
DevOps and Technical Environment
- Hands-on experience working within DevOps environments and software delivery processes.
- Understanding of CI/CD pipelines and collaboration between development and operations teams.
- Hands-on experience with Agile and DevOps tools such as Jira, Confluence, Git, Jenkins, or comparable platforms.
- Familiarity with modern cloud and containerization technologies, such as Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Docker, or Kubernetes.
- A software development or technical background is considered an asset.
Communication and Stakeholder Management
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Demonstrated ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, business stakeholders, Product Owners, and senior leadership.
- Strong stakeholder management, facilitation, negotiation, consensus-building, and problem-solving skills.
- Demonstrated experience managing competing priorities and maintaining alignment among diverse stakeholder groups.
- Proven ability to mediate conflicts and maintain a productive, collaborative team environment.
Preferred Qualifications
- Previous experience working with the Ontario Public Service (OPS), Government of Ontario, or other public-sector organizations.
- Additional Agile certifications such as:
- Professional Scrum Master (PSM)
- PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
- SAFe Scrum Master
- Agile Coach certification
- Lean Six Sigma certification at the Yellow, Green, or Black Belt level.
- Experience working in regulated industries, such as government, financial services, healthcare, or other highly governed environments.
- Experience working with enterprise-scale technology initiatives and complex organizational environments.
- Experience with software development, enterprise architecture, or technology transformation initiatives.
Core Competencies
The successful candidate will demonstrate:
- Servant Leadership – Empowers teams, removes impediments, and creates an environment where teams can perform effectively.
- Agile Leadership – Strong practical application of Scrum and Agile principles, with the ability to coach teams and stakeholders.
- Communication – Clearly communicates complex business, technical, and delivery concepts to diverse audiences.
- Facilitation – Effectively facilitates meetings, workshops, ceremonies, and stakeholder discussions.
- Business Acumen – Understands business objectives and translates them into actionable requirements and delivery priorities.
- Problem Solving – Identifies issues, performs root-cause and gap analysis, and develops practical solutions.
- Conflict Resolution – Effectively mediates disagreements and facilitates consensus among team members and stakeholders.
- Coaching and Mentoring – Builds Agile maturity and promotes continuous learning and improvement.
- Adaptability – Responds effectively to changing priorities, requirements, and delivery constraints.
- Collaboration – Builds strong working relationships across business, product, development, operations, and leadership teams.
- Organization and Time Management – Manages multiple priorities effectively in a fast-paced delivery environment.
- Emotional Intelligence – Demonstrates empathy, sound judgment, and awareness of team and stakeholder dynamics.
