Scrum Master

Our Vision uMed seeks to be a cornerstone of the efforts to reduce the burden of disease for patients by radically reducing the barriers to knowledge creation. Join us. Our Culture We are a group of trusting and inclusive individuals, who encourage, are creative and want to make a difference in the world. We do not take ourselves too seriously and we love to tell a story. We innovate, work hard and take risks but at the forefront is a joint mission to be part of groundbreaking research to ultimately advance and develop science to support those most in need. What we do The process of conducting clinical research is incredibly expensive and time consuming, limiting our efforts to find answers to the world’s most important medical challenges. uMed is a clinical research network fit for the 21st century, underpinned by cutting edge technology that connects patients, electronic health data and research groups across the world. Our rapidly growing network covers 90 GP sites in the UK representing over 2,000,000 patients with our first US healthcare system joining us this year bringing a further 5M patients. uMed was founded by an NHS doctor, supported by a world class board and backed by London and US based venture capital. Life at uMed No matter what an organisation is trying to achieve, success or failure is inextricably linked to the people within it. For a young company, there is no redundancy, so this relationship is turned up to eleven. At uMed we punch well above our weight due to the quality of the team we have built, and their dedication to our shared vision. Recognising this dedication, we have a fantastic benefits package and accompanying culture at uMed. This includes Private Health Insurance to keep you covered Pension Plan to help you secure your future 25 days of paid time off for your well-deserved breaks Work From Home equipment budget for a comfortable working space Flexible Benefits platform tailored to your needs Enjoy your Birthday Day Off on us! Eye-test vouchers for Specsavers to look after your eyesight Coworking policy – catch up with the team as regularly as once a week Enhanced Parental Leave Role Overview The Scrum Master is responsible for enabling one or more product and engineering teams at uMed to deliver work effectively through strong agile practices, effective facilitation, continuous improvement, and proactive removal of delivery impediments. The Scrum Master owns the team's agile delivery process and ways of working. They facilitate effective collaboration, improve team predictability, and create an environment where the team can consistently deliver high-quality outcomes. Beyond supporting day-to-day delivery, the Scrum Master plays a key role in improving uMed's delivery culture by embedding effective agile practices, increasing collaboration across disciplines, and helping teams continuously mature in how they plan, communicate, and deliver software. This is a servant-leadership role. The Scrum Master does not own product priorities, roadmap execution, technical decisions, or people management, but is accountable for the effectiveness of the delivery process and the continuous improvement of how the team works. Requirements Agile Facilitation Facilitate agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. Ensure ceremonies are effective, outcome-focused, and continually improved to maximize value for the team. Coach the team in agile principles and practices, helping individuals and teams continuously improve their ways of working. Encourage accountability, collaboration, transparency, and continuous learning across the team. Ensure agreed agile standards, ceremonies, and delivery practices are followed consistently. Agile Coaching & Adoption Champion the adoption of pragmatic agile practices across the product and engineering teams, helping move beyond process compliance to a culture of collaboration, ownership, and continuous improvement. Coach the product and engineering teams on effective agile ways of working, ensuring ceremonies become meaningful planning and collaboration sessions rather than routine meetings. Work with teams to establish effective delivery practices such as collaborative backlog refinement, estimation, technical design discussions, dependency management, and transparent delivery planning. Identify gaps in agile maturity and develop practical improvement plans to help teams continuously evolve their ways of working. Partner with the Director of Product & Delivery to continuously improve delivery processes, collaboration, and engineering effectiveness across the organization. Delivery Enablement Identify and remove blockers to the team's progress, escalating promptly where resolution sits outside the team. Support realistic sprint planning and capacity management, helping the team make achievable commitments based on capacity and historical performance. Work with the Product Manager to ensure backlog items are sufficiently refined, understood, estimated where appropriate, and ready for sprint planning. Monitor workflow throughout the sprint, helping the team maintain a sustainable pace and minimize bottlenecks. Manage cross-team delivery dependencies to ensure risks and impediments are identified and addressed early. Help improve sprint predictability by enabling teams to make realistic commitments and deliver consistently. Continuous Improvement Drive a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring actions from retrospectives are tracked, owned, and completed. Track team delivery metrics such as velocity, cycle time, sprint predictability, and flow, using data to identify opportunities for improvement rather than individual performance management. Identify recurring process challenges and work with Product and Engineering leadership to address root causes. Promote pragmatic improvements to team practices while maintaining consistency with uMed's delivery standards. Team Health & Collaboration Protect the team's focus by minimizing unnecessary interruptions, context switching, and unplanned work where possible. Foster an environment where risks, impediments, and differing viewpoints can be raised openly and addressed constructively. Encourage collaboration across Product, Engineering, and QA, helping break down silos and improve shared ownership of delivery outcomes. Support the onboarding of new team members into the team's agile ways of working. Build strong working relationships that improve communication, coordination, and dependency management across teams. Reporting & Stakeholder Communication Provide clear, transparent updates on sprint and release progress to Product and Engineering leadership. Surface delivery risks and impediments early, providing sufficient context for informed prioritization and resourcing decisions. Ensure Jira and related delivery tooling accurately reflect the team's progress and support portfolio-level reporting. Provide timely visibility of upcoming changes to support operational readiness and product configuration activities. Essential Skills & Experience Proven experience as a Scrum Master supporting cross-functional software development teams. Demonstrated ability to improve team delivery effectiveness through the pragmatic application of Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid agile practices. Experience coaching cross-functional teams and improving agile maturity through practical, hands-on guidance. Strong facilitation, coaching, conflict resolution, and stakeholder management skills. Recognized Scrum or Agile certification is desirable but not essential, with strong practical experience. Strong experience using Jira or equivalent agile delivery tooling to manage workflow, reporting, and delivery transparency. A proactive problem solver who takes ownership of removing delivery impediments rather than simply reporting them. Pragmatic in applying agile practices, understanding when structure adds value and when simplicity is more effective. Focused on improving delivery outcomes rather than enforcing process for its own sake. Excellent communication skills, with the confidence to challenge unhelpful behaviors constructively while building trust across teams. Calm, organized, highly collaborative, and able to influence without direct authority. Understanding of, or willingness to learn, the delivery considerations of working within a regulated healthcare or medtech environment. Experience working in a startup or scale-up environment is desirable.