Agile Coach

NYC Global Investment Bank

J Harlan Group is currently conducting a search for an Agile Coach at a global investment bank IN NYC to join a talented innovative and collaborative Digital Transformation and Data team, focused on high quality and consistent delivery to support the firm in meeting their business objectives – Hybrid Work environment.

As an Agile Coach, you’ll care about how individual teams and the organization are functioning and performing within their business and beyond. You will apply your broad data expertise though a mix coaching others, providing strategic advice, and performing Agile practice.

Key responsibilities:

• Maintain yourself as a master of agile, scaled agile methodologies, and new and emerging common agile practices.
• Ensure teams and the organization have a clear understanding of the values and practices of agile and agile methodologies, and the rationale behind them. Encourage and assist them with making continuous improvements to their agile ways of working.
• Lead and coach others in facilitating the regular team ceremonies e.g., daily stand-ups, refinement, sprint planning, demos, retrospectives, open space, lean coffee etc. Be adept at introducing fresh ideas and feedback into ceremonies to ensure these are at their most effective and stay interesting and relevant.
• Understand and help individuals and teams achieve their key motivations, career objectives and personal improvement needs, and coach them to be self-organizing and high performing.
• Encourage and assist teams in measuring their agile maturity and in maintaining a healthy backlog of continuous improvement items.
• Help teams within the organization understand their current state, how to experiment and continuously evolve how work gets done.
• Coach teams in defining all their work in terms of a clear outcome and how success will be measured. A practice of build, measure, learn.
• Work closely with leadership to understand progress, dependencies, impediments to help achieve great client and team outcomes. Key contact point for a wide variety of stakeholders across different levels
• Be proactive in broader activities and networking such as the guilds, agile study groups, mentoring, promotion of continuous improvement and Agile maturity uplift across Macquarie.
• Leverage agile communities to establish best practices and techniques for the organization.
• Assist with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information in a way that manages stakeholder expectations and demonstrates how the teams are improving and growing
• Facilitate discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution.
• Coach Scrum/Kanban Masters to be awesome at coaching, mentoring, teaching and facilitating their teams.
• Coach Product Owners to be awesome at strategizing; refining, maintaining and prioritizing the backlog; and in supporting the team with subject matter expertise.
• Coach leadership team members to be shining role models in agile ways of working and help them be awesome in their roles as servant leaders to the ecosystem.

The ideal candidate would have a background including:

• 2+ years' experience in an Agile Coach role in an Agile organization (amend as required)
• Deep understanding and experience of agile and lean thinking, and experience with concrete frameworks and techniques such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean Start-up, and Continuous Delivery.
• Great presentation skills. Awesome facilitation, communication, and mentoring skills
• Great at asking powerful questions. Empathetic listening skills
• Diverse teaching, training, and coaching toolbox to help the organization develop and mature in understanding agile values, principles, and practices.
• Passionate about Agile practices and continuous improvement, always on the lookout for how the organization can do something better, quicker with a greater result.
• Flexibility to deal with conflicting and changing priorities. Comfortable facilitating discussion on alternative approaches.
• Ability to assess detailed technical issues as well as to step back and look at the bigger picture.
• Strong interpersonal, influencing, and multi-level stakeholder management skills
• Comfortable with managing executives and stakeholders on high profile deliveries
• Degree in Computer Science/Engineering or Math with a background in Computer Science / Engineering, Mathematical or related educational background
• Experience with lively, organic, highly collaborative environments
• Must be an entrepreneurial, self-motivated, open-minded, conceptual, intelligent, bright individual who is intellectually honest & open to debate with excellent synthesis abilities.
• Strong desire to contribute and build a business – not just solve novel problems.

An individual who loves solving deep and complex technical and business challenges and wants to have an outsized impact with the products they build and deliver. An individual with a passion for technology, high level of intellectual curiosity, a commitment to excellence and an unparalleled drive to deliver world-class software.

They seek candidates who are high-energy self-starters who want to join an investment banking firm on the leading edge of the global markets. The management team needs individuals of the highest professional caliber who are leaders, problem solvers, analytic, detail-oriented, and entrepreneurial. Everyone at the firm works in a highly collaborative and charged environment.

Successful candidates are:

• Analytic and relentless in pursuit of the right answer
• Strong communicators who excel at rapid synthesis
• Able to demonstrate sound business judgment
• Able to digest complexity while maintaining an understanding of the “big picture” of business needs
• Team players who are energized by a collaborative enterprise

About the Client:

The firm is a major Global Investment Bank with expertise in banking, they operate in over 50 countries and employ over 18,000 people worldwide. They’re one of the largest financial services providers in the world, and are also engaged in retail banking, credit cards, corporate banking, and wealth and investment management. They provide large corporate, government and institutional clients with a full spectrum of solutions to their strategic advisory, financing, and risk management needs.

The firm’s employees maintain the highest professional and ethical standards. The firm has earned a reputation for honesty, fair dealing, and transparency in a competitive industry. They believe that these standards are the foundation for superior investment performance and are critical to delivering performance to clients.

Salary range for this position: $108,000 - $192,500/Yr. Actual base salary may vary based upon, but not limited to, relevant experience, time in role, peer and market data, prior performance, business sector, and geographic location. The successful candidate may also be eligible for an annual discretionary incentive compensation award. The firm offers a full spectrum of benefits, including Medical, Prescription Drug, Dental, Vision, Health Savings Account, Dependent Day Care Savings Account, Life Insurance, Disability and Other Insurance Plans, Paid Time Off (including Sick Leave, Parental Leave and Vacation), Holidays, 401(k), and Short/Long Term Disability, in addition to other special perks reserved for our employees.

Posted On: Tuesday, May 9, 2023