Consultant, Agile Leader (Kubernetes)

Job summary

Nationwide is seeking an Agile Leader to support their Kubernetes platform team, focusing on driving Agile execution, delivery discipline, and team effectiveness. This role requires a strong technical foundation, hands-on experience with Kubernetes, and deep knowledge of Agile practices to facilitate team operations and decompose technical work into actionable tasks.

Benefits

Qualifications

• Strong experience serving in an Agile leadership role such as Scrum Master, Agile Lead, Delivery Lead, or similar.
• Demonstrated experience supporting technical teams in Agile environments.
• Strong technical background with the ability to engage credibly with engineers and platform leaders.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes, including the ability to understand platform architecture and engineering work, capture technical requirements, and independently decompose work into actionable stories and tasks.
• Deep knowledge of Agile frameworks, principles, and ceremonies.
• Strong facilitation, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Proven ability to organize, prioritize, and drive execution in complex technical environments.
• Experience with Agile planning and work management tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar platforms.
• Direct people leadership or delivery leadership experience in a Kubernetes or platform engineering environment.
• Industry-recognized Agile certifications such as Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Professional Scrum Master (PSM), SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Agilist, or equivalent.
• Software development background or prior experience working in engineering delivery roles.
• Experience supporting infrastructure, platform, DevOps, SRE, or cloud engineering teams.
• Familiarity with modern engineering practices such as CI/CD, cloud platforms, infrastructure as code, and platform operations.
• Six years of experience in Agile, including three years as an Agile Leader or similar role.
• Strong technical expertise in one or more Agile practices and frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, and Lean.
• Technical background in Software Engineering.
• Three or more years working with ALM tools and Microsoft Office Suite.
• Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor team members and peers.
• Ability to manage multiple teams and lead cross-team initiatives.
• Excellent communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead all Agile ceremonies for the Kubernetes platform team, including daily standups, backlog refinement, sprint planning, retrospectives, and estimation/card sizing sessions.
• Partner closely with the Platform Manager, engineers, product partners, and key stakeholders to maintain a healthy and prioritized backlog.
• Capture technical and operational requirements and lead decomposition of large initiatives into actionable user stories, tasks, and deliverables the team can execute within sprint boundaries, including independently decomposing work when needed.
• Drive strong Agile discipline and continuous improvement across team workflows, processes, and delivery practices.
• Identify and remove impediments that affect team productivity, velocity, or delivery outcomes.
• Coach the team on Agile principles, Lean thinking, iteration planning, and effective team collaboration.
• Establish and reinforce consistent practices for story readiness, definition of done, sprint commitments, and retrospective follow-through.
• Use Agile metrics and delivery insights to help the team improve predictability, throughput, quality, and transparency.
• Support coordination across dependent teams when platform work spans multiple products, services, or engineering groups.
• Help create an environment of accountability, focus, and continuous learning across the team.
• Influence, coach, and mentor team members on Agile practices and principles.
• Remove impediments to the team’s progress; escalate obstacles requiring outside resolution.
• Identify risks and issues that might impact delivery and provide thought leadership, facilitation, and communication on a mitigation strategy.
• Apply secure software and systems engineering practices throughout the delivery lifecycle to ensure data and technology solutions are protected from threats and vulnerabilities.
• Collaborate at the highest level to prioritize work to maximize value towards business outcomes.
• Collaborate with Agile Team(s) to provide guidance in analysis, design, development, testing, automation, and deployment while ensuring the usage of best capability practices.
• Guide and enable DevOps, DataOps, AI/MLOps through the adoption and refinement of Agile practices on complex and strategic efforts.
• Monitor and report on team progress and performance through enterprise and industry metrics while maintaining data quality supporting metric accuracy.
• Collaborate with senior leadership on demand and financials.
• Actively participate in variable staffing functions for the line.

Skills

Certifications

Degrees

Industry

Relocation