Squad Lead (6 months FTC)

The Squad Lead is part of the Squad Leadership within the Sub-Tribe. The Squad Lead has overall accountability for the success of the squad, acting both as a servant leader and coach for the Sub-Tribe. The main responsibility of the Squad Leads include those of a Scrum Master role; working with the Product Owners in prioritisation of work, maintaining the flow of work through the end to end workflow, removing blockers, dealing with any organisational impediments, and protecting the squad from unnecessary distraction.  

Further, within the Tribe management structure the Squad Lead has a duty of care for the members of their squad, including working with Chapter Leads to support the pastoral care, performance, development and recruitment of staff.

Accountabilities

• Accountable for maximising Squad’s ability to deliver and achieve Agile delivery goals and contribute to Tribe OKRs.
• Accountable for Squad level ceremonies integrity, consistency and effectiveness driving Squad value.
• Accountable to both the Squad as a whole and each individual Squad member performing as a servant leader.
• Accountable for supporting the Squad to live the following values: productivity, quality, transparency, and openness over internal politics in everything it does.
• Supporting effective culture, collaboration and creating the optimum environment for the team to succeed.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for ensuring Squad level ceremonies like Daily Huddles, Agile Planning, Replenishment, Demos, Retrospective etc, are conducted focusing on value return.
• Responsible for the effective and consistent operational performance of the Agile workflow for the Squad.
• Responsible for Identifying, tracking, removing and escalating both blockers and impediments at Squad level to maintain both pace and flow of value.
• Responsible for ensuring compliance to Guardrails and Squad level activities.
• Responsible for owning and managing risks, issues and dependencies at Squad level.
• Responsible for managing and resolving intra-Squad dependencies by working with other Squad Leads within the Tribe.
• Responsible for both timely and effective tracking and reporting on Squad’s progress against Sprint goals to Tribe Leadership.
• Responsible for managing Squad capacity including administrating absences for squad members, utilisation and velocity. Actively engages with other Squad Leads in the Tribe and Tribe leadership to discuss resourcing and utilisation strategies.
• Responsible for providing Chapter Lead with relevant input for each Squad member supporting each Squad member’s development and performance needs.
• Responsibility to support the Chapter Lead for Pastoral Care where required.
• Responsibility to support the Chapter Lead with planning and executing recruitment of staff.
• Responsibility to support the Chapter Lead to review employee satisfaction and performance.

Key interactions

• Coaches Squad team members in Lean-Agile practices and mindsets.
• Support Product Owner with Squad backlog management.
• Collaborates and consults with other Squad Leads in the Tribe to manage resourcing and dependencies.
• Supports Tribe leadership in optimising value flow for the Tribe.
• Works with Chapter Leads to assist in the development of capability.
• Works with Chapter Leads to help with Pastoral care for squad members.
• Works with Chapter Leads to assist with planning and executing the recruitment for the squad.
• Works with Chapter Leads to review employee satisfaction and performance.

Knowledge and Experience

The following are each desirable, but not essential. We will consider a wide range of experience and evaluate candidates as a whole including against a set of competencies, rather than on individual skills or experiences.

• Knowledge and experience of Agile development techniques like: User Stories, Continuous Integration, ATDD - Acceptance Test Driven Development, TDD - Test-driven development, Continuous Testing, Pairing and Automated Testing.
• Knowledge and experience operating within a Data Warehouse environment, utilisting technologies including GCP, BigQuery, Teradata, WhereScape and MicroStrategy.
• Knowledge and experience operating with tooling to enable delivery, such as ticket management tools (Jira), BI tooling, knowledge management (Confluence, SharePoint), collaboration tools etc.
• Knowledge and experience of using Kanban Boards including the production of effective and timely squad performance monitoring reporting.
• Knowledge and experience with operating with an embedded SDLC process underpinned by Lean Agile practices.
• Project management fundamentals with the ability to apply principles, tools and techniques to develop/plan, manage or execute projects to ensure successful completion.
• Delivery Management or Scrum Master experience with a data or software development team that included applying scrum mastery techniques, lean agile principles and practices resulting in effective ROI.
• Experience operating within heavily regulated environments including external regulated consumer products and service offerings.

Desirable Professional Certifications

• SAFe® 5 Agilist certification
• Agile Management Foundation
• Scrum Master certification (e.g. PSM, CSM), particularly with a Kanban/Scrumban element (e.g. PSK)

Interview Process
There will be a two-stage interview process. Interviews will take place via MS Teams and will take place throughout January and February.

Location

For Hybrid workers (within a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to work from the office twice a month.  For remote workers (outside of a 50-mile radius of our Cardiff HQ) there is an expectation to attend the office a handful of times a year when required (i.e big meetings, workshops etc).

Salary, Benefits and Work-Life Balance

We do not have a set salary for this position, as it will be dependent on the successful candidate’s experience. We are happy to see CVs from all candidates who meet the requirements and will be happy to discuss the remuneration package.

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to work for in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.

All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.

You can also view some of our other key benefits here.

#LI-HH1