Squad Lead

An excellent opportunity has arisen for a Squad Lead to join our IT division here at Admiral Group Plc.

Job Purpose

The Squad Lead is part of the Squad Leadership within the Tribe. They have overall accountability for the success of the squad, acting both as a servant leader and coach for the Tribe. The main responsibility of the Squad Leads include those of a Scrum Master role; working with the Product Lead 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. 

The Squad Lead is also responsible for other day to day agile management activities and ceremonies, plus responsibility for upskilling the Squad in agile ways of working that enable the squad to self-organise, manage and deliver value using agile methodology. 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.

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 Squad capacity including administrating absences for squad members, utilisation and velocity. 
• Responsibility to support the Chapter Lead for Pastoral Care where required
• 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
• Works with Chapter Leads to assist in the development of capability and to help with Pastoral care for squad members

Knowledge and Experience

The following are desirable:

• 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 of using Kanban Boards including the production of effective and timely squad performance monitoring reporting
• Detailed 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 
• 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 

Desirable Professional Certifications

• SAFe® 5 Agilist certification
• Agile Management Foundation
• Scrum Master certification (CSM Certified Scrum Master, PSM – Professional Scrum Master)

Interview Process

• There will be a 1 stage interview for this role that will entail competency-based questions.
• Interviews will take place throughout October and November.

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