Senior Scrum Master

Opportunities at Optum, in strategic partnership with Allina Health. As an Optum employee, you will provide support to the Allina Health account. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by diversity and inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health equity on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

The Senior Scrum Master serves as a servant leader, Agile coach, and delivery facilitator for Enterprise Procurement technology teams. This role is responsible for enabling high-performing Agile teams, improving delivery predictability, fostering continuous improvement, and ensuring successful execution of strategic business and technology initiatives.

Working closely with Technical Product Managers, engineers, architects, support teams, and business stakeholders, the Scrum Master / Agile Delivery Lead helps translate priorities into execution by facilitating Agile practices, removing impediments, coordinating dependencies, and promoting a culture of accountability, transparency, and operational excellence.

The ideal candidate combines strong Agile leadership, delivery management, stakeholder facilitation, and technical acumen to help teams consistently deliver customer and business value while maintaining a sustainable pace and high quality standards.

You will enjoy the flexibility to telecommute* as you take on some tough challenges.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Agile Leadership & Coaching

  • Facilitate Agile ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, Release Planning, and Program Increment planning activities

  • Serve as a servant leader and Agile coach, helping teams adopt and continuously improve Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and SAFe practices

  • Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning

  • Establish and reinforce team working agreements, delivery standards, and Agile best practices

  • Coach teams in self-organization, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous improvement

• Delivery Planning & Execution

  • Partner closely with Technical Product Managers and Product Owners to ensure backlog readiness, story refinement, prioritization alignment, and sprint preparedness

  • Facilitate story decomposition, estimation sessions, sprint planning, capacity planning, and release planning activities

  • Support creation and maintenance of delivery plans and timelines that align with business priorities and roadmap objectives

  • Monitor sprint execution and proactively identify risks, blockers, dependencies, and delivery challenges

  • Remove impediments that impact team productivity or jeopardize delivery commitments

  • Coordinate dependencies across teams, platforms, vendors, support organizations, and business stakeholders

  • Facilitate cross-functional collaboration to ensure alignment on priorities, schedules, and delivery expectations

• Continuous Improvement & Team Performance

  • Drive retrospective discussions and ensure continuous improvement actions are documented, prioritized, assigned, and completed

  • Leverage Agile metrics and team insights to identify opportunities for process improvement and increased delivery effectiveness

  • Track and communicate delivery performance indicators including:

    • Sprint Predictability

    • Team Velocity

    • Capacity Utilization

    • Flow Efficiency

    • Lead Time

    • Cycle Time

    • Defect Trends

    • Release Quality

    • Team Health Metrics

  • Develop and maintain team dashboards, scorecards, and reporting artifacts that provide meaningful visibility into delivery performance

  • Identify opportunities to improve team efficiency through automation, standardized processes, tooling improvements, and workflow optimization

• Release & Operational Readiness

  • Partner with Change Management, Release Management, Support, and Operations teams to ensure successful deployments and production readiness

  • Coordinate release planning activities, dependency management, testing readiness reviews, implementation schedules, and post-release validation activities

  • Support team compliance with enterprise governance, documentation, testing, audit, change management, and operational standards

  • Facilitate release retrospectives and lessons learned reviews following large-scale deployments or major initiatives

  • Ensure operational readiness considerations are included throughout planning and delivery activities

• Stakeholder Engagement & Communication

  • Build strong relationships across Product Management, Engineering, Support, Procurement Operations, Architecture, and Business stakeholder groups

  • Facilitate discussions to resolve conflicts, clarify priorities, and align stakeholders around delivery objectives

  • Communicate delivery progress, risks, dependencies, and key metrics to leadership and stakeholder groups

  • Create executive-ready status updates, delivery summaries, and team performance reports

  • Help ensure strategic priorities are clearly understood and translated into effective team execution

What are the reasons to consider working for UnitedHealth Group?   Put it all together - competitive base pay, a full and comprehensive benefit program, performance rewards, and a management team who demonstrates their commitment to your success. Some of our offerings include:

• Paid Time Off which you start to accrue with your first pay period plus 8 Paid Holidays
• Medical Plan options along with participation in a Health Spending Account or a Health Saving account
• Dental, Vision, Life& AD&D Insurance along with Short-term disability and Long-Term Disability coverage
• 401(k) Savings Plan, Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Education Reimbursement
• Employee Discounts
• Employee Assistance Program
• Employee Referral Bonus Program
• Voluntary Benefits (pet insurance, legal insurance, LTC Insurance, etc.)

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear directions on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in.

Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Delivery Lead, Technical Project Manager, or related Agile delivery role
• 3+ years of experience facilitating Agile ceremonies and coaching cross-functional software development teams
• 3+ years of demonstrated success supporting software delivery teams in Agile development environments
• 2+ years of strong understanding of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Agile delivery practices, DevOps principles, and release management processes
• 2+ years of experience with Agile delivery tools such as Jira, Rally, Azure DevOps, ServiceNow Agile Development, or similar platforms
• 2+ years of strong knowledge of Agile frameworks including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and SAFe
• 2+ years of managing delivery risks, dependencies, and stakeholder communications
• Ability to influence outcomes and drive alignment without direct authority

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Bachelor's degree in information technology, Computer Science, Engineering, Business Administration
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), SAFe Scrum Master (SSM), SAFe Agilist (SA), or equivalent certification
• Experience supporting enterprise platforms and application development teams
• Experience working with ServiceNow development teams or enterprise workflow platforms
• Experience supporting large-scale digital transformation initiatives
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with the ability to interpret delivery metrics and drive continuous improvement
• Excellent facilitation, communication, organizational, and conflict resolution skills
• Knowledge of ITIL, Change Management, Release Management, and Operational Excellence practices
• Experience using Power BI, Tableau, ServiceNow Performance Analytics, or similar reporting tools
• Experience leading multiple Agile teams and coordinating cross-team dependencies
• Strong understanding of Product Management and Product Operating Models
• Experience working in highly regulated or compliance-driven environments

*All employees working remotely will be required to adhere to UnitedHealth Group's Telecommuter Policy

Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to local labor markets, education, work experience, certifications, etc. In addition to your salary, we offer benefits such as, a comprehensive benefits package, incentive and recognition programs, equity stock purchase and 401k contribution (all benefits are subject to eligibility requirements). No matter where or when you begin a career with us, you'll find a far-reaching choice of benefits and incentives. The salary for this role will range from $91,700 to $163,700 annually based on full-time employment. We comply with all minimum wage laws as applicable.  

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Application Deadline: This will be posted for a minimum of 2 business days or until a sufficient candidate pool has been collected. Job posting may come down early due to volume of applicants.

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone-of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location, and income-deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups, and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes - an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.

Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.

UnitedHealth Group is a drug-free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.

#RPO, #GREEN