Agile Delivery Lead/ Scrum Master : Group Data & ML Platform Tribe

at  Sanlam

WHO ARE WE?

Sanlam Group Technology is responsible for the provision of a digitally enabled technology service as a group COE, drive business and transformation and provide group-wide digital and data architecture. We operate the various technology platforms and shared services, ensure Cyber and Information Security resilience, and act as technology governance and risk orchestrator for technology across Sanlam.

EXPERIENCE

• 3+ years in a similar role with at least 1 year in team and/or company that builds technology
• Track record of high impact and investing in your own development

KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS

These are different capabilities that Agile Delivery Leads pursue mastery in that help them to produce high quality outputs and increase their impact.

• Deep expertise in Agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and hybrid approaches.
• Mastery in creating and maintaining high-performing team rhythms, ensuring a healthy balance of planning, execution, and reflection.
• Strong group facilitation skills to navigate discussions, promote collaboration, and ensure all voices are heard.
• A focus on building a culture of belonging and collaboration within teams.
• Incredibly high agency

Thinking Preference

• You look for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. You are high agency, high ownership in everything you do. You know we own our future, only we can make it happen. If you find something that keeps us from our mission, you own it or work collaboratively with others until you find the right owner of it.
• Where some see impossible, you see a way. You have the strong conviction in our ability to innovate and bring financial services, and financial confidence to everyone across the continent. You turn obstacles into opportunity, chance into change.
• You move fast and fix things. You publish early and often, when you fail you learn and go again. You know that speed gives you the licence to fail, because you’re moving fast enough to correct course.
• You love creating more with less. Knowing that the biggest impact is born of the smallest acts, scale is built into your thinking from day 1. This is not about meeting the needs of thousands; it’s about exceeding the needs of millions. And working through small and mighty teams is way we’ll do it.
• You seek out and value different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes. Making tomorrow not just different, but better.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

We’re a newly created engineering organization on a mission to empower and accelerate autonomous value creation through insights and ML across the group. Our main users are the data scientists and analysts who sit inside the business units and support them in developing and re-developing their financial and digital products to better meet the needs of our clients and our shareholders. Our other users are the data management and data product teams who produce the data sets analysts and scientists need to launch straight into their work.
The tribe is made up of 3 different engineering squads covering everything from how we ingest and store data, to how we develop and share ML artefacts and insights. We have one for ingestions, one for data storage and processing and one for insights & ML tooling. We have one data engineering talent pipeline for the whole tribe, where placements into specific squads are explored later in the interview process based on squad needs and candidate abilities. Data engineers report to the tech leads of the squad they are embedded into.
Agile Delivery Leads are an essential feature of high performing squads. By creating and continuously evolving the rhythms and rituals of the team, they maximize the time and cognitive load in the team invested towards team objectives and delivery. They work within their squad and across the organization to establish optimize the squads’ meetings, communication channels, ceremonies and even norms for agility and achieving their outcomes. Optimal team behaviors and inner workings are what make agility and high performance possible.
This is a role where mastery in group facilitation, team reflection and a variety of agile approaches comes together to give the squad the best environment possible to support their evolution to high performance. They work to ensure the squad works smarter, not harder, ensuring alignment, flow, and continuous improvement across every sprint and initiative.

WHAT WILL MAKE YOU SUCCESSFUL IN THIS ROLE?

• Maximized ‘flow’ time for engineer execution: Team has most time possible to focus on delivering impactful outputs and achieving their objectives.
• Meetings and ceremonies aligned to performance: All regular interactions, from sprint planning to retrospectives, are optimized to directly enhance team performance and drive outcomes. Zero wasted hours in team meetings.
• Clear alignment from missions to sprint tasks: Supporting Product Manager to in achieving seamless cascading from missions to OKRs, EPICS, initiatives down to daily work, eliminating duplication of discussions and delays.
• Elimination of persistent blockers: Proactively addresses and removes obstacles, ensuring that no blockers persist across sprints and the team can maintain momentum.
  Qualification
  Matric
  Relevant IT Qualification (IT Degree or Diploma) will be advantageous
  Scrum Master certification will be advantageous