Scrum Master

Closes: March 18, 2025
Starting Range: $84,939 to $126,439
Full Range: $84,939 to $156,359

Job Description
The Scrum Master facilitates and champions the agile process by coaching and mentoring teams, identifying and eliminating impediments, and promoting the use of standards and best practices. The scrum master ensures smooth operation of agile processes and activities, and is responsible for leading daily stand-ups, sprint planning meetings, and retrospectives. The role of Scrum Master is multifaceted, requiring a balance of technical knowledge, soft skills, and a deep understanding of Agile principles to help their teams succeed and improve continuously.

• Organize and facilitate agile activities including daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. Ensures that product backlog refinement sessions occur.
• Understands and optimizes team capacity for the upcoming sprint to focus on sprint backlog work.
• Organize and facilitate sprint planning and ensures that user stories are ready to pull into the sprint (refined, properly formatted, clear requirements, functional and non-functional criteria, estimated) and that the team has a high level of commitment and confidence to complete the work in the sprint.
• Ensure that team stays focused and aligned to complete committed user stories.
• Ensure that completed stories meet the “Definition of Done” prior to acceptance by the Product Owner
• Contribute to the advancement and improvement of agile practices within the organization.
• Utilize team feedback and metrics (e.g., quality, delivery, cadence, etc.) to identify areas of opportunity and work with team to continuously improve.
• Support the team in using agile planning and development tools (e.g. Azure DevOps, JIRA, Confluence, Rally).
• Proactively identify and resolve impediments to team progress.
• Support Scaled Scrum implementation in large-scale projects or organizations and tackle complex issues related to Scrum adoption and execution. 
• Mentor and guide other Scrum Masters or less experienced team members. Lead efforts to enhance the Scrum process across multiple teams.         

• Bachelor’s degree (4 years’ college) in computer science, business or a related field is required.
• 3 years of experience as a scrum master, project manager, or a related field is required.
• Scrum/agile experience with both software and non-software teams (i.e., network teams, security teams, other infrastructure teams) is preferred.
• Ability to effectively and efficiently partner with other teams to accelerate getting stuff done.
• Knowledge of the Scrum framework and Agile principles.
• Advanced organizational and time management skills to manage multiple tasks and priorities.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced multi-priority environment.
• Skilled in problem-solving to remove obstacles and help the team stay on track.

• Bachelor’s degree (4 years’ college) in computer science, business or a related field is required.
• 5 years of experience as a scrum master, project manager, or a related field is required.
• Advanced knowledge of the Scrum framework and Agile principles.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical information in a condensed manner to various stakeholders verbally and in writing.
• Coaching skills and ability to motivate teams.
• Experience with agile planning and development tools (e.g. Azure DevOps, JIRA, Confluence, Rally).

Other combinations of education and experience may be considered. 

Hybrid work options are available for this role. The successful candidate will be required to work at our Spokane, Washington headquarters at least 3 days per week including Mondays and Tuesdays with an additional day determined by the employee and manager. 

To Apply
We encourage you to apply as many of our positions have step progressions to account for an incoming employee’s various levels of knowledge, skills, and experience.

Complete an online application and attach your resume and cover letter to your profile. All documents must be attached to your application at the time of submitting your application for review. No documents can be attached after you click "Submit".

Benefits
At Avista, we believe our employees are essential. Through them we deliver value to our customers and the communities we serve. The physical, mental, and financial health and well-being of our employees and their families are important to us. We are committed to offering a comprehensive total rewards program comprised of an externally competitive, internally equitable compensation structure and a benefits package that allows us to retain and attract a diverse, engaged, and skilled workforce. Our benefits package includes medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverage, retirement benefits, incentive plans, wellness resources, time-off programs and much more. In addition to our total rewards program, the Pacific Northwest offers abundant outdoor recreation, four distinct seasons, and all the amenities and activities an individual or family might be interested in. To learn more, please visit our benefits website at https://avistabenefits.com/.

Pre-employment screening requirements
Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a drug test, background check and motor vehicle records review.   

Avista’s Commitment to Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action
Avista is a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds, and we are committed to Equal Opportunity Employment, Affirmative Action efforts, and Equity, Inclusion and Diversity. We strongly encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, protected veterans, and all others. All qualified applicants will be considered regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status, age, sensory, mental or physical disability (unless based upon a bona fide occupational qualification), Veteran status or any other classification protected by nondiscrimination laws.

Equity and diversity in our workplace is important to us. Please view Equal Employment Opportunity Posters provided by OFCCP here. Prior to the next step in the recruiting process, we welcome you to inform us confidentially if you require any special accommodations to participate fully in our recruitment process. Avista will make reasonable accommodation to assist a qualified person with a disability in the job application, interview process, and to perform the essential functions of the job whenever possible, where undue hardship would not be created for Avista. Please contact us at humanresources@avistacorp.com if you would like assistance.

Salary : $84,939 - $126,439