Scrum Master Retirement Insurance Domain

Scrum Master Retirement Insurance Domain
Location: Piscataway, NJ
Position type: W2 contract

Role Summary:

We are looking for an experienced and proactive Scrum Master with domain expertise in Retirement Insurance to lead Agile teams in delivering high-quality business and technology solutions. The ideal candidate will facilitate Scrum ceremonies, remove impediments, drive continuous improvement, and ensure successful collaboration between business stakeholders, product owners, and development teams.

The Scrum Master should have a strong understanding of retirement insurance processes, policy administration, claims, member/customer servicing, compliance requirements, and digital transformation initiatives within the insurance industry.

Key Responsibilities:

• Facilitate all Scrum ceremonies including Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and Backlog Refinement.
• Coach the team on Agile principles, Scrum practices, and continuous improvement.
• Remove blockers and impediments that may affect sprint goals or team productivity.
• Support the Product Owner in backlog management, prioritization, and user story readiness.
• Track sprint progress, team velocity, and delivery metrics to ensure effective execution.
• Promote transparency, accountability, and a collaborative team environment.

• Coordinate with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Developers, QA teams, Architects, and business stakeholders.
• Communicate project status, risks, dependencies, and delivery updates to leadership and stakeholders.
• Facilitate collaboration between cross-functional teams and ensure alignment on objectives and timelines.
• Manage stakeholder expectations and support change management initiatives.

• Work closely with business teams to understand retirement insurance products, pension plans, annuities, policy lifecycle, contributions, claims, and servicing processes.
• Support Agile delivery for domain-specific initiatives such as:
  • Policy administration enhancements
  • Retirement benefits processing
  • Regulatory and compliance changes
  • Customer/member portal improvements
  • Digital onboarding and servicing
  • Data migration and modernization programs
• Ensure the development team understands domain requirements and business priorities.

• Monitor team performance using Agile metrics such as burndown charts, sprint velocity, lead time, and defect trends.
• Identify areas for process improvement and implement best practices to improve team efficiency and product quality.
• Support release planning and coordination across multiple Agile teams where required.
• Encourage a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous learning.
• Help teams adopt scalable Agile practices in enterprise environments.

Required Skills:

Scrum / Agile Skills

• 10+ years of experience in Agile project delivery.
• 6+ years of experience as a Scrum Master.
• Prior experience in Retirement Insurance / Pension / Annuity / Insurance domain is highly preferred Strong experience as a Scrum Master in Agile software delivery environments.
• Deep understanding of Scrum framework, Kanban, Agile principles, and servant leadership.
• Experience facilitating Agile ceremonies and coaching distributed/cross-functional teams.
• Ability to identify and remove impediments effectively.
• Experience using Agile tools such as JIRA, Confluence, Azure DevOps, or similar.
• Good understanding of Agile reporting and delivery metrics.

• Strong knowledge of Retirement Insurance / Pension / Annuity domain.
• Understanding of:
  • Retirement products and policy administration
  • Pension and annuity operations
  • Member/customer servicing
  • Claims and benefits processing
  • Regulatory and compliance requirements in insurance
• Familiarity with insurance business processes and digital transformation initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Information Technology, Computer Science, Finance, or related field.
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM), PSM, SAFe Scrum Master, or equivalentcertification preferred.
• Experience working in insurance, retirement services, pensions, or financial services domains.
• Exposure to enterprise-scale Agile transformation programs is an advantage.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with SAFe / enterprise Agile frameworks.
• Knowledge of compliance, risk, and regulatory projects in the insurance sector.
• Experience working with API, digital platforms, cloud transformation, or legacy modernization projects.
• Understanding of data and reporting systems in the retirement insurance domain.